It took all five games Tuesday night in Kalona but when the dust settled it was IMS who took home the Southeast Iowa Superconference win over Winfield-Mt. Union. The two squads had met in tournament play over the weekend where IMS swept the Wolves. WMU was intent to make sure that didn’t happen this time around taking game one 25-22. Following the match Winfield-Mt. Union Head Coach Dave Pieart spoke about the difference in the two match ups.
“Our serve receive improved tonight and that helped even up the match and our offense improved tonight and that helped even up the match, [but] we didn’t feel like we were really ourselves,” Pieart said.
IMS rallied to win game two by a 25-20 score. Games three and four were the most hotly contested of the night. IMS held off a furious WMU rally in game three to win 25-23 and the Wolves returned the favor taking game four 29-27. The fifth and deciding game was owned by IMS, as they scored the first ten points of the set en route to the 15-5 win. Following the game IMS Head Coach Dwight Gingerich talked about the atmosphere surrounding his team going into the decisive fifth game.
“Find some light even at the end of a game that we weren’t playing well so you can go into that next one with some momentum, and we were able to do that going into game five I thought even after losing a tough game four,” Gingerich said. “We talked about in the huddle, are there things that we can do to tighten this thing up, we had to adjust our blocking angles a little bit, and boy Casey Perez did a great job at the net, as did Olivia Yutzy, Riley [Schmieder], McKayla Brush, and Natalie [Graber] and Demi Brezina played outstanding, there’s some digs there that were tremendous in making that extra effort, and we were in between games four and five and it wasn’t like a speech time really, it was listening for what they saw and then let’s go in, there was a level of enthusiasm in the huddle that was let’s go in you don’t mess with it.”
In the win IMS was led by Olivia Yutzy’s nine kills. Kristin Davis had 30 digs and Casey Perez accounted for 46 assists. After the game Perez talked about her teams poise and intensity.
“I think we thought we can do this, and third game we had a really good lead we just little by little started relaxing and they started coming back. We knew that game was so crucial, because having a two wins over somebody in a three out of five, and at the end of the game we all buckled down and we [said] we have to play and start working together and then things started to happen,” Perez said. “ It was crazy, we just kept coming back tot he huddle and saying ‘okay, let’s get this next sideout, let’s just get this next point,’ It was a great game, it was probably one of the best games I’ve been a part of.”
WMU was led by Erica Robison’s 13 kills, Taylor Rodgers had 18 assists and Shelby Therme came up with 19 digs. IMS is now 10-6 on the year and will host Highland Thursday while WMU falls to 9-6 and the Wolves host Mediapolis on Thursday night.