Slow starts hinder Hodag volleyball against Hatchets

The Rhinelander High School volleyball team had trouble getting going in each set Tuesday night at home against the Tomahawk Hatchets. While Rhinelander dug out of the first big deficit, playing from behind eventually became too much for the Hodags to overcome in a 3-1 loss to the Hatchets at the Jim Miazga Community Gymnasium.

Rhinelander faced deficits of nine points or greater in each of the first three sets. Though the Hodags rallied from down 17-8 in the first to take it 25-23, they dropped the second 25-10 and the third 25-19. Tomahawk led most of the way in the fourth set as well as the Hatchets took it 25-20 to claim the match. 

“We had a little momentum but, when they’re at game point it’s too little, too late,” Hodag coach Jayme Wyss said afterward. “Anytime we got quiet, the scoreboard reflected our quietness and now we’re down by 8 or 9 again. They really just have to take ownership of what kind of team they’re going to show up and be that night.”

The Hodags roared back from down nine points in the first set thanks to an 11-3 run that got them within 20-19 before the Hatchets used a timeout. The Hodags drew level at 22-all after a pair of Tomahawk errors.

Libbey Buchmann had a block kill and then Kelsi Beran put away a ball to the short corner to put Rhinelander up 24-22. After a kill by Tomahawk’s Siennah Calkins, Buchmann finished it with a spike to the back line to give the Hodags an early lead in the match. 

“The first set, we were down by nine points and you definitely don’t feel like you’re in it at that point. Then you just kind of get some momentum for a while and it’s like, ‘OK, wait. We’re back in it all of a sudden.’ To win it by two like that, that was a big deal,” Wyss said.

Unfortunately for Rhinelander, the momentum did not carry over to the second set. The Hatchets scored the first five points, were up 12-4 when the Hodags called their first timeout and then went on a 5-1 run to force Rhinelander to use its last timeout of the set. Tomahawk further pulled away from there to square the match.

The Hodags dug themselves a big hole again in the third, trailing 18-8 at one point. Rhinelander got back within 20-17 on a Buchmann kill, but Tomahawk called a timeout and scored four of the next five points out of the break to fend off the Hodags and take a 2-1 lead in the match.

“The second set we just couldn’t pull anything together and the third set, a lot of it was our errors,” Wyss said. “We’re just making really dumb choices, or we’re hitting out or hitting in the net or we’re in the net. You can look at our errors and, again, we’re just killing ourselves. We’re there. We have the momentum, our back row was hit and miss. Sometimes they were so good, long volleys, we were in it. Then sometimes it was we just couldn’t figure out where they were hitting.”

Rhinelander trailed most of the way in the fourth set, though the gap held in the 3-to-5-point range much of the set. The Hodags got within 20-17 following a Tomahawk attacking errors but, just like the third set, responded with a 4-1 run that helped to put the match away.

Calkins led Tomahawk with 12 kills while outside hitter Claire Albert had 11. Wyss said the Hodags struggled to get a consistent block on the Hatchets’ top two offensive threats. 

“When we played Mosinee (last Saturday at the GNC tournament in Medford) we had really, really good blocks. If we could had a notch better blocks tonight I feel like that would have made a big difference,” she said.

Buchmann paced the Hodags with 12 kills while sisters Kelsi and Lexi Beran had four kills each. As a team, the Hodags hit just .026 on the night, with 25 kills and 22 errors in 115 chances.

Lucy Lindner had 17 assists, Tori Stella had a team-high 21 digs and Buchmann added 16 digs and a pair of service aces.

Rhinelander (11-26, 2-10 Great Northern) closed out conference play in sixth in the GNC. Wyss said she feels her squad is on the cusp of making a turnaround, but acknowledged the rebuild is still going to take time.

“We’ve made gains. We’ve had two conference wins, which is more than the last six years combined,” she said. “It says a lot about where we started from. It’s easy to get caught up in the losses, because I don’t take losing well. But, at the same time, it’s also good to acknowledge we’re getting somewhere. It’s going to take more than one year.”

The Hodags finished the regular season with a non-conference match at Crandon Thursday that concluded after press time for today’s edition. Though the WIAA had not released the brackets for postseason play as of press time, Wyss said Rhinelander will play a first-round game at Merrill this coming Tuesday after the coaches in the regional seeded their bracket on Monday.

Jeremy Mayo may be reached at [email protected].