WACO falls to Winfield-Mt. Union, but gets moral victory

Winfield-Mt. Union walked away with a sweep, but last night?s volleyball match was a moral victory for WACO.

The Warriors played with an intensity that head coach Tom Ferguson hadn?t seen yet this season.

?We just haven?t been playing,? Ferguson said. ?[Wednesday night] we had a heart-to-heart. I told them, if you play the game, it will up your confidence, and that will give you the opportunity to win. They needed to execute what they were trained to do, and I thought they did an excellent job of that.?

Winfield-Mt. Union (24-7, 7-1 SEISC North) took the first game handily, 25-9. But in the second set, WACO (3-16, 0-12 SEISC North) was a new team.

?They really stepped up tonight,? Winfield-Mt. Union senior Alicia Escher said.

WACO battled against the Wolves point-for-point in the second set and even took a three-point lead at 11-8.

Winfield-Mt. Union started a comeback from there, going up 13-11, and eventually stretched the lead to 21-13.

However, the Warriors weren?t done yet. Sophomore Erika Leichty served three straight points, but that wasn?t enough for Ferguson. He wanted to see a little more intensity from his team.

?They?ve been afraid to serve aggressively,? Ferguson said. ?[Leichty] was doing her safe serve out there. But in the second game, I said I wanted her to jump, to be confident.?

Leichty?s first jump serve caught the Winfield-Mt. Union defense off guard, and the ball fell to the floor for an ace.

At 21-17 the Wolves got the ball back on a WACO error, and they finished the game with a three-point run.

Still, scoring 17 points against a Winfield-Mt. Union squad that has frequented the Class 1A rankings this season was a boost in confidence that the Warriors needed.

?We just had a lot of confidence in ourselves and our team and what we could do,? Leichty said. ?It just picked us up.?

After Leichty?s service run, the whole team seemed to have more power, and it took the Wolves a little while to catch up.

?We got a couple aces out of that,? Ferguson said.

WACO junior Bailey Graber served a pair of aces in the third game, but the Wolves did catch up, and Escher said that their ability to do so gave them the win.

?Our defense [was key to the match],? she said. ?We have to pass well so our setters can do what they do.?

Setter Katie Benson had 18 assists on the night for the Wolves, helping Escher on her way to a team-high 15 kills.

And with one of those Escher kills, the third set ended 25-14 in favor of the Wolves, who sealed the sweep.

Nevertheless, Ferguson was happy with what he saw from his team.

?Winfield had seen us play, and I?m sure they came in here tonight thinking that they could walk all over us,? he said. ?We didn?t let them do that.?

WACO junior Rosemary Skriver finished with six kills, and freshman Hannah Black had two. Junior Ashlyn Hammen had 11 assists, and Leichty had 11 digs, followed by junior Katelyn White?s five. Black had three blocks.

For Winfield-Mt. Union, junior Erica Robison had seven kills, while juniors Emily Mathews and Shelby Therme both finished with five.

Winfield-Mt. Union head coach Dave Pieart notes that while his team might not have been fully ready for WACO?s intensity coming into the match, it should have been.

?You have to expect a team to play hard on their home court,? he said. ?In game two, we played slow, but picked it up and played with more speed in game three.?

In the Wolves? next match ? they host Wapello on Tuesday ? Pieart hopes to see that speed from the start.

?We need more consistency in effort and on offense,? he said. ?It?s Senior Night, and we don?t want to lose that.?

Tuesday is also the final regular-season match for Winfield-Mt. Union.

WACO has the Davis County Tournament this weekend, and then has two more regular-season matches, including a recently-added match against Washington on Monday, before it starts regional play at New London.

?I think we?ll keep working on our mental game, but the mental part was there tonight,? Ferguson said. ?We need to come in, shake the rust off, be more aggressive, and shift in defense faster.

?Before, in practice, we had to work on just getting players to move their feet. We have the opportunity to go in and push a little harder now.?

Leichty shares the sentiment, and is ready to go in practice the next week.

?We?re going to work on everything: smoother play, perfecting all the little things,? she said.