The Warsaw Tigers appeared to take the fight out of the Wawasee Warriors Thursday at the Tiger Den, helping them cruise to a three-game victory.
"We just didn't play our game," Wawasee coach Amy Miller said. "We struggled on serve-receive right at the beginning and we got psyched out. Warsaw's a real competitive team. They are a good team - I don't want to take anything away from them - but we didn't play our game."By defeating Wawasee 25-11, 25-15, 25-13, Warsaw improved its Northern Lakes Conference record to 3-2, an objective that was important to coach Doug West.
"We always want to play well in-conference." West said. "We know that every team in the conference is a good team. We don't ever want to overlook anybody, so we're just trying to play at a high level."
With a young Wawasee team coming to town, West was aware of senior Krista Spearman, but outside of her, the Warriors were a mystery.
"To be honest, I didn't know exactly what they had," West said. "Of course, I knew they had Spearman, I had heard about her, but I didn't know what they had around her. We just knew we had to play with a high level of intensity and enthusiasm on our side. We accomplished that tonight."
On the night, Spearman led her team with seven kills and equalled sophomore Meghan McDaniel's match-high three blocks. Senior Kindra Wright also had seven assists and five digs for the Warriors, but it wasn't enough to hang with the Tigers.
"I thought we had a balanced attack which makes it harder to beat you," West said of his team.
The Tigers attack was led by senior Kate Denlinger and sophomore Sarah Shilling, who had seven kills each, with freshman Natalie Decker and senior Sara VanDeWater recording four a piece, off 29 assists by senior Allison Reichard.
"We were passing in-system, we were serving them out of system and when you're doing that, you're going to get lots of good cuts at the ball," West said. "And we did get good cuts in all of our attacking lanes."
And that attacking seemed to be a real downer for the Warriors.
After going down 25-11 in Game 1, Wawasee fought back in the second game. With the score tied at 13-13, and momentum on their side after scoring six of the previous seven points, a block by Spearman found its way out-of-bounds, giving the point to Warsaw. From there, Warsaw went on an 11-2 run, taking the 25-15 game win.
"It's all mental for us," Miller said. "We've got a lot of talent, we just can't use it."
On his side of the net, West was pleased to see his girls bounce back after seemingly losing momentum to Wawasee.
"There were two or three different points in the match, where we kept mentally strong," the Warsaw coach said. "That was real good for us to see. We're kind of starting into the second part of the season, and we're hoping that we'll become a really mentally tough team."
WARSAW DEF. WAWASEE 25-11, 25-15, 25-13
Kills - Kate Denlinger (War) 7, Sarah Shilling (War) 7, Krista Spearman (Waw) 7, Natalie Decker (War) 4, Sara VanDeWater (War) 4
