Balanced Notre Dame Prep sweeps Marysville in D2 regional semifinal
ORTONVILLE >> Balance was the key as the Pontiac Notre Dame Prep Fighting Irish rolled to a 25-11, 25-12, 25-19 win over the Marysville Vikings in Tuesday’s Division 2 volleyball regional semifinals.
The Fighting Irish used a varied attack to keep the Vikings off balance, especially in the first two sets. Notre Dame Prep seemed to fire shots from anyone and everywhere – left, right, front or back.
“That’s our strength is being as unpredictable as we can. That’s what we set out to do this year,” Fighting Irish head coach Betty Wroubel said. “We have to mix it up, and if we can go to different people all the time, we think we can get people out of system, and that’s advantage us.”
+25 Notre Dame Prep vs. Marysville regional volleyball photo gallery
The Fighting Irish’s balanced attack was led by 15 kills and 21 assists from Aly Borellis and 11 kills from Sophia Sudzina. But several other Irish hitters also got in on the act as there were multiple stretches where Notre Dame Prep would have five different players get kills within a span of five or six points.
Notre Dame Prep’s defense was, if anything, even more balanced as Josie Bloom and Olivia Kowalkowski each had 10 digs while Ally Berent chipped in nine digs.
The Vikings started slow in each of the first two games and could never recover as the Fighting Irish kept them out of synch. Marysville was solid defensively all night, sparked by 18 digs from Elyssa Miller and 17 digs from Alyssa Morgan. The scrambling Vikings were often able to extend points through their defensive effort and hustle, but ultimately, the balanced Notre Dame attack left them scrambling a little too much, especially in the first two games, to get into their offense.
But Marysville got off to a better start in the third game, taking an early 6-3 lead before fighting tooth and nail the rest of the way as they got their offense going.
Johlen Gaffen (13), Marysville sets up a kill attempt during regional semifinal volleyball action agains Pontiac Notre Dame Prep at Brandon High School Tuesday, Nov. 12, 2019. Marysville fell to Prep 3-0. (LARRY McKEE – For MediaNews Group)
(LARRY McKEE – For Media News Group)
“Our entire goal from start to finish was to just go aggressive. Notre Dame Prep is a really good team, but we weren’t really running our offense in the first two sets because we weren’t getting a lot of balls to target,” Vikings head coach Amanda Busch said. “In the third set, we finally started to get our balls to the target. We had our runs of momentum in the other two sets, but we really just dug our heels in, and we wanted to be as aggressive as we could be in the third set.”
The Marysville offense was led by Reilly Francek with eight kills, while Joeleen Gaffney had 13 assists.
With the win, Notre Dame Prep (46-10-2) advances to the regional finals where they will face a tough North Branch team coached by James Fish.
“They’re a good team. He (Fish) is probably the best coach in the state, so they’re going to be ready for us,” Wroubel said. “We’re just taking it one game at a time. I don’t think very many teams thought we’d be in the regional finals when we graduated two All-Americans last year. So we’re tickled pink to be where we are, and we’ll take it one game at a time.”
Marysville wraps up the season 26-16-3.
“It was our goal to leave everything on the court tonight, and I’m really proud of how we played. We pushed ourselves, and Notre Dame Prep is a very good team. When you end your season, you want it to be playing the best volleyball that you can play, and I think that we did that,” Busch said.
November 12, 2019