Lady Vikings Fall To FairfieldNAPPANEE – Heart and desire took Tippecanoe Valley to a 22-win volleyball season this year. But Fairfield had the same elements, and added some height to their mix.
The end result was a 26-24, 23-25, 25-22, 25-15 Lady Falcon win over Valley in the 3A NorthWood Sectional Thursday night.
In the last set, the Lady Vikings gave up a nine-point run when they could least afford it. The run turned a 15-13 Lady Falcon lead into match point.
The first three sets were the kind of close, hard-fought competition one hopes to see in the postseason. The first set was tied six times before Fairfield edged away.
Valley never trailed in the second set, but gave up a seven-point lead. Eight ties later, with Sophie Bussard trading kills with Fairfield’s 6-foot-2 junior Chloe Bontrager, the Lady Vikings earned an emotionally and physically draining 25-23 win.
“Even in the crowd, you could have heard a pin drop the first few points of the third game because everyone used so much energy in the second game,” Valley coach Mallory Eaton said. “I had to laugh to myself a little bit.
“We worked really hard on conditioning this year. We have kids that play basketball, and they were coming in in the mornings and doing workouts. We know we’re not very big and have to outwork teams, and we work hard to stay in shape.
“But we’re human, and once the adrenaline wears off, we had a couple of lulls. But up until that final game, I thought we handled it well.”
Fairfield used its size advantage to keep the pressure on the young Lady Vikings, with Olivia Trippiedi the only senior on the roster. The Lady Falcons consistently found Julia Brown in the middle, and she found enough holes in the Valley defense to record 37 assists. Chloe Bontrager finished with 18 kills and Felicity Bontrager had nine kills in the match.
Eaton said her Valley squad knows they have to overcome its lack of height to be successful. Thursday night, there wasn’t quite enough in the tank to get it done.
“They were going over our blockers a lot. They’ve got some size and that middle (Brown), even though she’s undersized, she’s extremely athletic,” Eaton said.
“We had a few unlucky breaks, like blocking errors. But toward the end they were hitting some great shots, working the perimeter and even if you’re in the right defensive spot, it’s going to be a tough ball to get.
“You can only be so tall and jump so high. I think if we’d have had a little more jump, because we used so much energy early, we had to work harder to get up there, and I think we ran out of gas toward the end, and that worked in their favor.”
Bussard finished with 19 kills for Valley, and Trippiedi concluded her volleyball career with 13 digs. Shayleigh Shriver had 14 digs, and Emily Peterson had 31 assists.
Eaton had high praise for the effort her team turned in, not just Thursday night but for the whole season.
“Obviously, toward the end of the game, we could see the writing on the wall. But the biggest thing about this group was they didn’t give up. Even when the chips are down against you, they just kept fighting.
“I think this is some of the best volleyball we have played all year. If it’s going to be your last game, you want to go out playing the best ball you can.”
