Hodag volleyball fades late in four-set loss to Antigo

The Rhinelander High School volleyball team ran out of steam Tuesday night in a Great Northern Conference match at Antigo, falling to the Red Robins three sets to one.

After dropping the first set 25-21, the Hodags had momentum after taking the second 25-22. That went away late in the third as Rhinelander fell 25-16 and the funk carried over to the fourth as the Robins started on a 12-0 run and eventually clinched the match with a 25-13 win. 

“I just felt like it was after the second or third set where it was like, ‘This is good volleyball guys. Let’s just have some fun,’” Hodag volleyball coach Jayme Wyss said. “It was fun. It was long volleys. We were in it. We could read them … I really hope that we get to play them again at the tournament.”

Rhinelander trailed by five midway through the third set when Antigo went on a run. Wyss said her team ended up out of rotation at one point, which appeared to stall its momentum.

“The girls were just so confused. (The official) even gave me a bonus timeout. He’s like, ‘Well, I didn’t want to, I didn’t want to use it as a timeout when you guys were just out of rotation because we need to just talk about where everybody is.’ It was long enough and confusing enough for them that like it just took out a lot of momentum,” Wyss said.

Rhinelander then struggled with serve-receive early in the fourth set as the Robins went on a run that put the Hodags in a big hole to start.

“We just couldn’t get rid of the server. We were fine with her earlier. We knew what her serves looked like. So like that’s frustrating. Just couldn’t get out of it,” Wyss said.

Rhinelander was down 24-8 at one point in the fourth set and staved off five consecutive match points to walk away with a little bit of momentum at the end of the match.

“It was like, OK, yes, all of that sucked and was terrible, but at least you guys ended on a high note. We pulled it back together,” Wyss said.

Ultimately, errors cost the Hodags again on Tuesday. Rhinelander had 11 missed serves and 18 serve-receive errors according to statistics kept by the team. Rhinelander finished the night minus-1 percent on the attack on the evening (21 kills and 22 errors on 95 attacks).

Ava Rathbun led the team with eight kills and added a team-high 17 digs. Olivia Ruetz added five kills for the Hodags in the match while freshman Kylie Treder had 18 assists.

“I felt like Olivia was playing way smart. She still had some sloppy errors where she just didn’t have good hand contact on it, but she ran slides multiple times and got two kills on slides,” Wyss said. “So her and Kylie were just clicking way better, just finding each other in the court, finding some options. That was a big deal.”

Defensively, Maddie Paulson added 10 digs for Rhinelander while Kayla Skubal and Cassidy Lindner had nine each. Corynn Waksmonski and Rathbun each recorded a block kill and Tori Stella had three service aces. 

“We had long volleys. That’s the thing, we can have long volleys. I felt like our defense was fairly decent,” Wyss noted. “We picked up a lot of stuff and we could, especially the twins (Maddie and Kenzie Paulson), they could just read a lot and shift — especially if it was like something that dropped short and one of them was in the front row. They’re there picking it up. Tori had a great night in the back. Kayla’s always solid.”

Rhinelander dropped to 1-11 on the year with the loss and traveled to Prentice for a triangular meet that included GNC rival Lakeland on Thursday. The T-Birds came into that meet of a straight-set upset victory over defending GNC co-champion Medford on Tuesday. 

The Hodags travel to Wautoma on Saturday for an invite.   

Jeremy Mayo may be reached at [email protected].