Hodag volleyball falls to Lakeland, goes 1-3 at Ashland

The Rhinelander High School volleyball team could not stop the big run Thursday night as its GNC losing streak reached 59 matches.

Lakeland pulled away in the second half of each set and swept the Hodags 25-19, 25-8, 25-15 at the Jim Miazga Community Gymnasium. 

Ultimately, the Hodags struggled to get much offense going against the T-Birds, finishing with only eight total kills in three sets. 

“They’re intimidating. They’re a big team and they move well and play a fast-paced ball,” coach Dan Wolter said. “We knew that going in and I thought we played really good defense and, in that first set, we had a pretty good lead on them and just weren’t able to hold it.”

Rhinelander led 15-11 at one point in the first set before Lakeland went on a seven-point run to take a 18-15 lead. Rhinelander got back to within 20-19, before a passing error resulted in a side out. From there, a pair of aces from Lakeland’s Meg Pfannerstill followed by two more passing errors for the Hodags have the T-Birds the opening set. 

Lakeland inched away in the second set, up 15-8 before putting the hammer down and taking the final 10 points to build a commanding two-set lead in the match. Rhinelander led 11-7 early in the third, but that was followed by another eight-point spurt for Lakeland and the Hodags could never recover. 

“We came out slow that second set and just couldn’t rebound off of it and climb back in,” Wolter said. “We did a good job coming off that and rebounding that third set. We got out to a lead and just weren’t able to sustain it. Serve-receive let us down.”

Kelsi Beran led the Hodags with three kills on Thursday while Lexi Robinson and Lucy Lindner had two kills each. Lindner added four assists and 13 digs while Libbey Buchmann and three assists, nine digs and chipped in a pair of blocks.

Emma Chiamulera had seven digs for Rhinelander and Macey Schmoeger had three service aces. 

“I thought we played really good defense,” Wolter said. “We had big blocks and dug a lot of balls up tonight and stayed in points, I thought. Our defense played really well. I thought we served very well, only three service errors in the entire match. That was good to see.”

Pfannerstill, who was one of the top attackers in the GNC a season ago, unofficially finished with six kills for Lakeland, including two on the final three points of the match.

“We did what we could on the block trying to put our bigger hands in the way and put a big block up against her,” Wolter said. “I thought we did a good job of that. She’s a good player and she’s always going to find her kills. We’ve just got to find a way to rotate her out of that front row.” 

Ashland Invite

The Hodags fell to another GNC competitor on Saturday in the non-conference Ashland Invite, dropping a match to Northland Pines as part of a 1-3 day at the tournament. 

Rhinelander was swept by Northland Pines, dropped a three-set match to Ironwood, Mich. and then won a three-setter against Mellen before losing to Ashland in straight sets in the final match of the day. 

“It was a good day. We played tough, tried out some new rotations up here,” Wolter said. “We got a lot of girls that haven’t been in some playing time and they did well. We’re still trying to find our best rotation, I think, and something that’s going to get us more wins.”

The Eagles took the first set from Rhinelander 27-26. Though customary to need to win by two points to take a set, Saturday’s invite had a hard cap at 27 points to avoid any exceedingly long games. The Eagles took control from there, taking the second set 25-15.

“I thought we came out and started really hot against Pines, pushed the game 26-27. They had a cap at 27, so we just couldn’t get that last point,” Wolter said. “Otherwise, we played competitive there. We had a couple of competitive sets against Ironwood and got a set win, just couldn’t get it that third one.”

The Hodags took the first set from Ironwood 25-21 but struggled the rest of the way, falling 25-14 in the second and 15-8 in the decisive third set. 

Rhinelander dropped a third straight set, falling to Mellen 25-14 in the opener before rallying back to take the second 25-19 and the third 15-11 to secure its first win since the Friendship Tournament in Wisconsin Dells Aug. 26.

“We just kept playing and did a good job on our serve-receive that game and getting in system,” Wolter noted. “The kills numbers kind of show that. We had 18 kills in that match and that’s a lot for our team to be able to do that. We played really scrappy, I thought, against them.”

Ashland defeated Rhinelander 25-20, 25-14 in the finale.

The Hodags spread the attack around again as five different players finished with nine or more kills, led by Lily Treder with 16. Beran had 14 kills, Buchmann had 13 kills and 27 digs while Schmoeger and Mya Krouze had nine kills each. 

Lucy Lindner had 33 assists and five service aces for Rhinelander. Ava Krouze had 13 assists. Emma Chiamulera led the back row defense with 50 digs while Tori Stella added 22 digs. 

“I thought we had a lot of attacks today,” Wolter said. “I thought our passing was in system pretty well. We had attacks, just weren’t able to get balls to the floor as much as we needed to. Then our serving errors, I think, hurt us. We had a lot of missed opportunities on the service line with just not keeping it in.”

The Hodags had 30 service errors on the day — including nine each in the Ironwood and Ashland matches. 

The Hodags (8-8, 0-2 Great Northern) are back in action tonight on the road at GNC-leading Mosinee. 

Jeremy Mayo may be reached at [email protected].