SYRACUSE – Whitko’s Kaitlyn Reed set a school record with 22 kills in a single match, and she added 25 digs and three aces in the Lady Wildcats’ 25-15, 25-21, 25-17 sweep of Wawasee at the Hardwood Tepee Monday night. “Our goal was to keep the ball away from No. 22 (Reed) as much as possible. She got her kills; she got what she needed to for (Whitko) to win,” Wawasee interim head coach Ryan Edgar said. In the first set, Whitko got off to an early three-point lead and grew the margin steadily. The second set saw Wawasee take its only lead of the night in the early stages, only to see the Lady Wildcats eventually tie it at 14 and again at 16 before taking over the set. The third set saw Whitko win seven of the first eight points before Wawasee tied it at 10. But Whitko scored eight of the next 10 points to salt the match away. Reed concluded the match with the last of her kills, a spike down the left sideline. “They fought back a little bit,” Edgar said. “What we’ve been talking to them about, and we’ve kept track; we had so many unforced errors. “Oh, my goodness, it killed us. You can’t have 10-15 unforced errors in a game and expect to compete. Whitko played well, but if we’d have taken those away, I feel like we’d have been in every game, right down to the wire. I don’t want to take anything away from (Whitko). We need some girls to step up, show a little bit of heart, little bit more pride, and a little bit more fire out there. “I kept seeing our heads tucked a little bit. I saw us going back into that same routine of ‘we’ve been getting beat a lot this year.’ I’ve seen some fire in the last week or so, but it didn’t show up here tonight.” Whitko head coach Jamie Stidham wasn’t especially pleased with her team’s performance, even if the Lady Wildcats got their 14th win, the high water mark for the program over the past 20 seasons. “It was too close. We’ve been struggling lately, making a lot of errors,” she said. “We haven’t played as strong since we played Rochester (on Sept. 14) as we did before that. I told them we need to figure out what we can bring out (today) against Wabash to clean it up. It looks sloppy.” Stidham did recognize Reed’s record-setting performance. “She’s just a strong, all-around six-position player for us. We know she’s capable, and she showed it tonight.” Wawasee returns to Northern Lakes Conference play when it travels to Warsaw on Thursday. Whitko travels to Wabash in Three Rivers Conference play tonight.
