SOUTH WHITLEY - The girls burst out of their huddle in the corner of the gym, ran onto the court and pelted the unsuspecting crowd with foreign objects.

Candy.

Candy is what these Whitko volleyball players threw by the handfuls to the fans. Run laps, throw some candy. Candy everywhere. Candy for everyone. Candy clanking around in the bleachers.

Whitko played host to Manchester on Thursday, and the Wildcats pulled out the stops to make sure people enjoyed their evening of volleyball between these Three Rivers Conference rivals.

The Wildcats were having fun, for sure. They passed out their candy, practiced to hard rock music, then won the first game 17-15. One more win, head for home. The home team and its fans go home happy.

Problem was, Manchester wanted to win this thing for the bragging rights, for the 1-0 TRC record, for the road fans who showed up.

The Squires crashed this Whitko party. They won the second game by a convincing 15-8 score.

The third game was even easier. The Squires won 15-3.

Game, set, match. Manchester wins.

Both coaches talked about emotions afterward.

"I think we may have come out a little overconfident," Whitko coach Jennifer Freel said. "The first game, we got behind but pulled through and came back to win.

"The second and third games, we got behind and couldn't come back."

"We were kind of emotional the first game," Manchester coach Jessica Tate said. "After the first game, I told them we needed them to be steady out there."

Only three matches into the 1997 season, the Squires are already a better TRC team than they were all of last year.

Manchester was 0-7 in the TRC in 1996. Manchester is 1-0 in the TRC in 1997.

A kill by Greta Miller, an ace by Jodie Peden and a kill by Michelle Gerber sent the Squires on their way in the third game. The trio pushed Manchester's lead from 3-2 to 6-2.

Whitko helped out, too. The Wildcats returned one wide out-of-bounds, hit another into the net and then used up too many hits trying to get another over the net.

Manchester led 9-2.

Manchester tacked on two more before Whitko scored. With Manchester ahead 11-3, Peden jump-served the Squires to their win. She aced three of the last four points, helped by a Gerber kill on the other.

A Whitko team that valiantly erased an 8-3 Manchester lead to win the first game, that never said die, disintegrated by the end of the third match. Peden earned two of her three aces at the end when Whitko players hollered "out," only to see the ball safely bounce inbounds. Two times this happened.

Balls dropping in did not go unnoticed by Freel.

"It wasn't so much what (Manchester) did," she said. "It was what we did to ourselves. We hurt ourselves with too many service errors, mental errors. Too many times balls dropped in right between people."

Brittany Waybright served Whitko back into the first game. She served six straight points to turn that 8-3 deficit into a 9-8 lead. The teams see-sawed back and forth, knotting at 15-15.

Amber Landis came up big for the Wildcats, delivering a monster kill and a block after the 15-15 tie to lead Whitko to the win.

Gerber keyed Manchester's win in the second game, firing three straight aces into the heart of Whitko's defense. Her aces increased Manchester's lead from 4-2 to 7-2.

Whitko had closed the lead to 8-5 when Gerber stepped back in to serve. Manchester led 9-5. She delivered another ace. Manchester led by four or more the rest of game two.

"Michelle did a good job for us," Tate said. "She hit well on the front and back rows. Megan Eckert, our setter, was a leader for us out there. Jodie Peden ... they all did a nice job."

Manchester improved to 2-0 overall, while Whitko fell to 2-1 and 0-1 in the TRC. Freel and Tate are both first-year varsity head coaches. Both know their girls, because both were junior varsity coaches at the same schools the last two years. Both plan on seeing big-time improvement this year. Manchester was 7-24 last year, while Whitko was 13-19.

But only Manchester celebrated when Thursday's match ended.

"We were fired up to come in here," Tate said. "We wanted to come into our second match of the season and show everyone what we can do."

Lose 17-15, then come back to win 15-8, 15-3.

That's what the Squires can do, and that's what they did. [[In-content Ad]]