The Bluejay volleyball team has wasted little time jumping into mid-season form, running their overall record to 26-2 while racking up the championship of their 6-team home invite on Saturday.
The invite title was the second straight for Merrill, which had placed second in its first two tourneys on top of a 1-0 dual start.
The Bluejays worked their 5-0 magic with a 10-1 set record, dropping Rice Lake (25-18, 25-7), Athens (25-15, 27-25), Chippewa Falls (25-12, 21-25, 15-12), Edgar (25-13, 27-25) and Witt./Birn. (25-16, 25-10).
“Today was a good day in that we won another tournament, but in terms of play, it was one big roller-coaster ride,” MHS coach Steph Nelson said. “We had a lot of high points in our games, but it would be followed by a lot of big dips in momentum and overall play.
“This tournament really showed us, though, how good of a team we really are. We can play some of our sloppiest games ever, but yet go 5-0 on the day.”
Comebacks were critical to the Bluejay success.
“We did do a really good job of digging ourselves out of holes,” Nelson said. “I will give that to our team; we never give up. At many points in many of the games, we were down by 4+ points, but we managed to come back and win.
“During the third game of the Chippewa match (the only team to take us to 3 games), we were losing 7-11 and we came back and won 15-12.”
Powerful offense has been a trademark of the Jay play, but the defense was at least as potent on Saturday.
“At the end of the day, we played some of the best defense I’ve seen us play,” Nelson said. “Reegan Byer had a great defensive game today. She just seemed to get some great digs/passes up, as did Lindsay Krueger, Renee Sladek and Bri Piepenbrok.
“Where we seemed to struggle today was offensively. We would get a great pass, then sail our attack out of bounds.
“The last match of the day, the girls started making some great decisions; not hitting the ball as hard as they could when the set wasn’t on, placing the ball well, and then tipping when necessary.”
Boosting the Bluejay performance were: all-tourney selection Renee Sladek (33 kills, 12 blocks, 16 digs); Lindsay Krueger (20 k, 7 aces, 64 assists, 13 d); Reegan Byer (7 ac, 25 as, 16 d); Bri Piepenbrok (6 ac, 30 d); Casey Steffen (10 k); Laurne Hojan (7 k, 3 bl); Morgan Marnholtz (6 d); Aubrey Waedall (5 k, Jenna Zamzow (5 d); and Katie Zuelsdorff (4 k).