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WHEELERSBURG — After racking up six straight victories to begin this season, Wheelersburg admittedly hit a rough patch.
Coming into Tuesday’s matchup with South Webster in SOC III action, the Pirates were 2-2 record in their previous four contests — a stretch where they had lost eight of their last 14 sets.
The Jeeps? Quite the opposite.
South Webster entered the night with 11 straight victories and hadn’t lost a set since Aug. 29 in a five-set win over Waverly.
That narrative looked like it was going to continue writing itself three games into Tuesday’s match, where the Pirates found themselves in a 2-1 hole and facing a third loss in their last five tries. But that’s when Wheelersburg coach Kelsey Glockner learned something about her group.
CREDIT: Derrick Webb/SOSA
They’re anything but quitters.
“She said, ‘It’s the fight.’ She told us we all needed to check in and if we wanted it that bad, we had to show it,” Pirates hitter Grace Woodward said of Glockner’s message to the team. “That’s exactly what we did. We didn’t just say we wanted it. We showed it with our actions. This was really big for us. The SOC was on the line.
Woodward and company rallied their way back to force a fifth set and, eventually, gutted out their most important victory to date — a 25-20, 22-25, 16-25, 25-17, 15-4 final.
“This win is huge,” Glockner said. “We’ve had some problems in the past few games and they were games that we thought would maybe go a different way. It wasn’t that we lost those matches, but how we lost them. But we kept talking about learning from those losses and moving forward. Those games weren’t great but they didn’t cost anything. The girls’ first goal is to win the SOC and, obviously, this game mattered. The push out of the losses was not to let them stop us from what we are trying to do, which is win the SOC. That’s why this is so big.”
Tale of the tape
The Jeeps took an early 9-4 lead in the first set. But a 4-0 burst put the Pirates (9-2, 5-0 SOC) right back in the thick of things before SW’s Makayla Raynard ended the scoring run.
Shortly after, Laikyn Hall went on a run of her own, scoring five straight points from the service line — including three aces — and giving Wheelersburg a 13-11 advantage.
Gracie Perkins and Alyssa Mullins then went to work, extending the edge to 20-15 before the Pirates held off a late rally to put away a first set win.
“One of the big talking points in the locker room after this win was our selflessness,” Glockner said. “We knew we had ways to score and we had a game plan. Today was probably the first time where I felt that everybody bought into it and did what we asked them to do. For example, in the first and second sets, we knew that [South Webster] was going to try and stop Gracie Perkins. So we had a plan to score in other ways, and it was working. No one cared that it was working or who was making it work because we wanted to win. Everybody checked in.”
The Jeeps, however, had a counter punch to throw.
Mia Crum started the second set on a hot streak, giving South Webster (11-1, 4-1 SOC) an early lead before Brea Shupert and Raynard later got in on the action, keeping the Jeeps in front midway through at 15-13.
Wheelersburg fought back to force a 17-17 tie, thanks to a kill from Woodward, but Crum was too much to handle down the stretch as SW forced a 1-1 tie with a 25-22 victory.
In the third, it was all SW.
While the Pirates managed to take a 4-1 lead out of the gates, they quickly saw it disappear. And after it did, things quickly went downhill.
PHOTOS: Images from Wheelersburg’s win over South Webster
Raynard logged a kill and an ace to put SW ahead 9-6. Later, after Shupert sent a ball screaming to the floor and Lauren Kaltenbach posted back-to-back aces, sandwiched in with a block from Kennedy Hamilton, the Jeeps had ended an 8-0 run and led 17-8.
That was more than enough momentum to go up 2-1 in the match with a resounding 25-17 win.
But in the midst of adversity and facing a loss head on, Glockner’s group didn’t flinch.
Woodward, who was phenomenal throughout the entirety of the fourth set, gave her team a 6-5 lead and they never looked back. Mullins, Perkins, Laynee Walker and Brooklyn Miller all logged scores to power a 25-17 victory and force a fifth and final set.
“We had a scouting report and we knew of a few rotations that we wanted to try and stay in so that we could score,” Glockner said. “Those rotations were also rotations where we wanted to try and limit [Mia] Crum. We weren’t going to stop her. We expected her to score. But I thought we did a good job of not letting it take over what we were trying to do. It was a next-ball mentality. We tried to limit the go-to’s, limit the damage and stay in rotations we thought we matched up well in.”
The momentum that Wheelersburg built in the fourth carried over to the fifth.
Enter Ella Chamberlin.
The Pirates’ setter, who had recorded her 1,000th career assist earlier in the night, stepped to the service line and put the Jeeps to bed.
Chamberlin got the volleyball with a 2-1 lead and when the Jeeps were finally able to side out, Wheelersburg had an 11-1 advantage — a sequence that included three aces, two kills from Perkins, a kill from Mullins and two South Webster timeouts — en route to a dominant 15-4 win.
“I hope this can be a turning point for us,” Glockner said. “We’ve battled through some turning points and this is a huge win. So I hope we can look back on it and say that it was a turning point. I’m hoping these girls can fully see their potential through this lens tonight.”
Stat book
Wheelersburg’s offense was paced by Mullins and Woodward. Mullins tallied 18 kills and 17 digs while Woodward added 16 kills alongside 19 digs.
Also chipping in was Perkins with 14 kills, Chamberlin with 51 assists, 13 digs and five aces, and Mylee Gleim, who paced the defense with a team-high 28 digs.
Raynard led the Jeeps with 15 kills, 10 digs and three aces while Crum had 13 kills and two aces of her own. Shupert helped out with 11 kills, Lauren Kaltenbach posted four aces and 14 digs, Sidney Keslar passed out 44 assists and Addi Claxon led the defense with 24 digs.
What’s on tap
While South Webster looks to get back in the win column on Wednesday against Northwest, the Pirates take a trip to Valley on Thursday.
Following that matchup are home dates with Zane Trace and Minford — Saturday and Tuesday.
“What I want to see going forward is our girls choosing to do it,” Glockner said. “I fully believe in this group, collectively as a unit. Whatever they’re being asked to do, they’re capable of doing. We’re still trying to speed up the offense, still trying to speed up free-ball plays and we’re chipping away at those things. But those are still improvements we’re needing to make because at the end of the season, the finish we’re looking for, those things are going to be required. Everybody else keeps getting better and we also have to grow.”
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