Lady Warriors Pull Away For Win Over WhitkoSYRACUSE – Both Wawasee and Whitko came in to Monday’s volleyball match hungry for a win, which helped set up a dramatic comeback and an anticlimactic end to the contest.
Wawasee won the first two sets, then Whitko came back to take the next two. After the Lady Wildcats’ Kristina Slater came up with back-to-back aces to give her team a 3-2 lead in the final set, the Lady Warriors scored the next 13 points to win the match 25-21, 25-17, 22-25, 20-25, 15-3 at the Hardwood Tepee.
Wawasee had a chance for the sweep, leading 22-20 late in the third set before giving up the lead. The fourth set was tied at 16 before Whitko pulled away.
“That huddle we had at the end of the fourth set was an interesting one,” Wawasee coach Kayla Riportella said.
“I told them ‘of all teams, you guys are more prepared for this situation than anyone playing against you.’ We play 15-point games all the time in practice, so they were ready, they dug deep and they took charge.”
In the final run, Wawasee’s Peyton Rookstool had six of her match-high seven aces, including five straight, putting Whitko on its heels the rest of the way and giving Wawasee just its third win of the season, but its second win over Whitko in three days.
“It’s huge (to get the win), and it’s something my team needed,” Riportella said. “I told them ‘this is our turning point.’ We’ve been hungry for wins all season, we’ve been trying and fighting, and we’ve been coming up short.’
“Today they dug deep and they pulled it out.”
The Wawasee coach said it was good to get a reward for the work her team has put in, but there’s still plenty of work to be done.
“We’re still working on consistency overall; we’re working on controlling our serves,” she said. “We did a better job of keeping the serve in the court when it mattered tonight. We’re still working on a couple of defensive kinks, working out some of our quicker offensive swings, but we’re going to get there. And I’m confident we will.”
Whitko coach Mike Howard had a 20-minute meeting with his young team in the locker room after the match.
“We talked about focusing on the positive things, like how we got in position to win sets three and four. It was the play of Sarah Hewitt, coming in and giving us a spark defensively and giving effort,” he said.
“Then we talked about the fifth set, which is something we’ve been struggling with, and the idea of mental toughness. It’s about being able to take a punch and being able to come back, find a way, dig down and have some sort of will where we’re able to push through some things.”
With just one senior on the Lady Wildcat roster, there’s a lot of growing pains with the Whitko squad.
“There’s some kids out there that are young, and sometimes being young is good, and sometimes it’s bad,” said Howard. “In this case, them being able to maybe forget something and put it behind them is good. We switched up the lineup a little bit. I don’t think it’s our best lineup, but tonight it worked.”
“When we serve and pass, we give ourselves a chance. That didn’t happen in the fifth set.”
Wawasee (3-16) travels to Warsaw for a Northern Lakes Conference match Thursday. Whitko (3-19) plays a Three Rivers Conference match at Wabash today.
WAWASEE 3, WHITKO 2
Whi 21 17 25 25 3
Waw 25 25 22 20 15
Whitko (leaders): Aces – Kristina Slater 6, Haley Howard 3; Assists – Alicia Sikora 42; Digs – Slater 27, Howard 13; Kills – Howard 17, Carissa Beck 14.
