Sterling falls behind, loses to Metamora in 3A sectional semifinals

DUNLAP – The onslaught came fast and furious, and it left the Sterling volleyball team behind the eight ball from the very beginning in the Class 3A Dunlap Sectional semifinals on Monday night.

In the end, Metamora’s corps of tall, powerful hitters proved to be too much for the Golden Warriors as they suffered a season-ending 25-8, 25-8 loss to the Redbirds.

“They’re big and they’re fast across the net, and every hitter in the front row puts down the ball with pace,” Sterling coach Dale Dykeman said. “We lost to a very, very good team.”

Metamora started with the serve, and libero Emily Cronkhite reeled off 10 straight points to open the match. Two of them were on aces, three came on kills by Hannah Tellor, and Esma Frieden stuffed a pair of blocks in the surge.

After a Kathryn Rowzee kill finally ended the opening run, Frieden had a kill and Sophie Adams served an ace for a 12-1 Redbirds lead.

“Actually that’s been one thing we’ve been working on,” Metamora coach Tara Ballard said. “We’ve been getting off to slow starts, so it’s kind of been our focus to get off to a fast start. Sterling obviously has a great program year after year after year, and we knew it was going to be a tough one, so we wanted to come out fast and grab the lead.”

A kill by Sienna Stingley and an ace by Katie Dittmar marked the only time in the opening set that the Warriors (16-18-1) scored consecutive points, but Metamora (35-1) answered with kills from Tellor and Kayla Pacha.

Pacha and Sterling’s Grace Egan twice traded kills, then Victoria Hall sandwiched a pair of aces around another Pacha kill. Rowzee and Pacha traded kills to make it 21-7 Redbirds, then Frieden and Adams added kills for Metamora.

“I think we were just too fired up and ready to go, but when we got on the court, the environment just scared us a little bit,” Egan said. “They played really, really fast volleyball, and I think we just weren’t used to that or ready for that.”

After an Egan kill from the back row for Sterling, Frieden closed out the first set with a kill.

“We knew tonight if we were to have a chance, we were going to have to execute our game plan and play pretty flawlessly, and we just didn’t do that in those first 10 points,” Dykeman said. “Digging out of a 10-0 hole against any team is really hard; against a team of that caliber, with what they have, is almost impossible.”

It was more of the same in the second set, as everywhere Hall set the ball, a Redbird was there to put it away. Tellor had nine kills and a block, Pacha finished with seven kills and a block, and Frieden added four kills and two blocks. Adams chipped in three kills.

“Our hitters are phenomenal,” Hall said. “I love them to death; they’re the sweetest girls you’ll ever meet. They make my job easy; it’s all them, not me.

“We all really love each other, so working together is easy. We just have so much fun out there, and play together really well.”

Sterling started out better in the second set, as Egan had a kill and a block to keep the Warriors within 4-2. But a Tellor kill and a Hall dump kill were followed by a Sterling error and consecutive lineup violations for a 9-2 Redbird lead.

A Metamora service error and a Rowzee kill brought Sterling within 9-4, but that’s when the Redbirds took control again. A Tellor kill for a sideout sent Hall to the service line, and she reeled off nine straight points. Tellor had three kills in the run, Bella Gregory had a kill and a block, Hall served an ace, and Pacha finished it with a kill for a 19-4 lead.

“Our back row does a great job of getting the ball to Victoria, and she does a great job of mixing it up with her sets,” Ballard said. “She makes the hitters look good and they make her look good, so it’s a great balance.”

Egan, Dittmar and Rowzee had kills down the stretch for Sterling, but a Freiden spike, another Hall dump, and a Sterling hitting error closed out the match.

Hall finished with 21 assists and 11 points, including three aces. Cronkhite added 10 points and three assists for Metamora.

Egan had six kills and a block for Sterling, while Delali Amankwa dished 12 assists, and Rowzee spiked four kills.

“We definitely tried to lean more on other players and made sure we played as a team. We needed to take a second and just breathe, but I felt like we didn’t come back fast enough,” Egan said. “But we definitely stood up toward the end of the season, and we kept the history of regional titles going. Everyone stepped up really well.”

The Warriors lose only one player off the roster, as libero Karmen Weinrich was the lone senior. The hot streak Sterling hit down the stretch – nine wins in its final 11 matches – is what Dykeman and his assistant coaches talked about in the locker room after the match.

“I think you saw in us some of our youngness finally come out tonight – and with a freshman and three sophomores out there who have never been in the postseason or in this type of environment against that quality of a team, we showed that a little bit,” Dykeman said. “We’re hoping for us, for our program, this is a growth opportunity for some of those kids that we still have for two or three more years. Now they’ve got that out of the way, they know what’s expected, they know what the environment feels like.

“We talked about how that sting is there … but I told them after a 1-8 start, who would’ve thought we’d have finished third in a pretty good conference and then in the top 32 teams in the state in 3A? From where we started to where we got, our girls grew incredibly well, they were playing their best volleyball at the end, and that’s just a testament to hopefully what we’re going to bring back and be able to continue to build on next year.”