He threw a punch at the sky, when the buzzer finally sounded. Then he shouted. Then he leaped – no, bounded was more like it – into the arms of one his coaches, Paul Gunsett.
Even with a new look and a new tournament format, Bishop Dwenger continues to rule preseason SAC volleyball.
An unproven Saints team won its fifth straight SAC tournament title Saturday at North Side by beating Concordia in the championship match 25-15, 12-15, 15-6.
Because of a change in format with nine SAC teams, the three pool winners from Thursday’s round – Dwenger, Concordia and Bishop Luers – played in the championship round-robin pool. The Saints and Cadets had both beaten the Knights, so their head-to-head matchup was for the title.
With only two players returning with varsity experience, junior Maddie Mayers and sophomore Brie Rahrig, the Saints appeared ripe to be knocked off the SAC tournament perch.
“We are just a very inexperienced team right now,” Dwenger coach John Minnick said. “I am tickled pick that we won and played as well as they did. We opened with Bellmont (on Tuesday), and that (loss) really showed our inexperience.”
Dwenger broke a second-place tie all time with Concordia with its fifth tournament title. Northrop holds the record for total titles and consecutive ones with eight straight from 1993 to 2000.
“We go into the season with everybody counting us out because we lost (six) seniors, and we start out with Bellmont and got swept in three, and that was kind of embarrassing,” said Mayers, an Illinois recruit who had five kills and two aces. “We came into this tournament, and we knew Minnick really wanted to win it, and we had won it four years before.”
The Saints, who had to play back-to-back matches, used the momentum from a three-game win (25-18, 10-25, 15-6) over Luers and jumped on the Cadets early in the championship. But Concordia bounced back with a big win in Game 2.
In the third game, the second-seeded Saints broke away from a 3-all tie with five straight points and never trailed again..
“It was a big loss in that second game when my libero (Leah Stetzel) got hurt, and she couldn’t finish playing,” Minnick said. “There you could see that we were playing on our heels because she wasn’t able to be on the floor.
“In that third game, (Katie Rosswurm and Elizabeth Chandler) stepped in and we served the ball a lot better, we passed better and we sided out when we had to when No. 22 (Nicole Nelson, eight aces) was back serving after she killed us in the second game.”
Concordia, the tournament’s top seed, beat fourth-seeded Luers in two games in the first of the three pool matches, 25-18, 25-20. It was mental breakdowns that cost the Class 3A No. 5 Cadets against the Saints, according to coach Tricia Miller.
“The third game was anybody’s game, and we kind of crumbled,” Miller said. “It will be a fun SAC. It will be interesting to see what happens, but I feel our kids are coming.”
