HARRISBURG — The top ranked Harrisburg Tigers hosted the Huron Tigers in Class AA volleyball Friday night, which ended with a win for Harrisburg at three sets to one.
Set scores for Harrisburg were 24-26, 25-22, 25-16 and 25-19, bringing them to 18-1 on the season, while Huron falls to 11-9.
“I’m proud, we really battled in those last two sets, we just made too many mistakes. We went toe to toe with the top team in the state.” said Huron coach, Shelly Buddenhagen. “We came here to learn and get better.”
Huron took an early lead, working hard for the win in the first set with Harrisburg close behind. The teams were tied throughout the set until Harrisburg had a 6-1 run taking their first lead.
Harrisburg’s first run was broken by Mikena Moore’s second kill, followed by Jayda Shillingstad’s first kill and the teams tied at 15-15. Then Kayla Schimke came in with a pair of kills and the Huron Tigers took the lead at 17-15, with a 5-0 run.
Halfway through the first set both teams had used one time out each, continuing to pick up kills, but also hitting some errors.
Harrisburg’s Madison Wassink jumped in with her fourth kill to bring the score to a tie at 24-24, but Moore answered with a block kill for Huron, followed by a Harrisburg hitting error to give Huron the first set at 26-24.
The second set started with a couple of errors on both sides. A double block kill by Moore and Shillingstad gets things started, and Schimke chimed in with a kill.
Both teams chased each other for the lead with no more than a one point lead early in the second set, as Schimke caught fire with four kills for Huron sandwiched between a pair of Harrisburg kills by Avery Kirkey.
Harrisburg broke the chasing game with a 3-0 run after a time out to bring them into the lead at 13-10, with an ace from Ashlee Cain. Huron came back with kills from Hollee Niehus, Moore and Shillingstad, bringing the score to a 15-15 tie, but a Huron hitting error and a Wassink kill gave Harrisburg the lead again in a tight knit second set. Huron took a time out with Harrisburg at a 18-16 lead, to which Schimke answered with another pair of kills to come back to a tie at 18-18.
Harrisburg caught another 3-0 run toward the end of set two, as Hallie Mertz and Wassink brought the score to 22-19, and Huron took their final time out of the set. Harrisburg came back with a hitting error, and Cain earned the point back with a kill. Moore brought Huron back up to 21-23 but Wassink took Harrisburg to set point. Niehus kept Huron alive with a kill, but the Huron Tigers were caught off guard and lost the second set to Harrisburg 25-22.
Avery Thorson of the Harrisburg Tigers kicked off the third set with a kill, followed by a Huron error. It took them to a quick 3-0 lead. The Harrisburg Tigers then took over the game. Wassink hit back-to-back kills, followed by an ace by Rachel Nelson and a kill from Meghan Krull, to achieve the biggest lead of the match yet for Harrisburg with an eight point lead at 11-3.
Alexis Urena answered with an ace, but Huron struggled to keep up with Harrisburg in the third set. Harrisburg worked their way up to a 10-point lead at 17-7, leading Huron to take their final time out of the set.
Harrisburg continued to take the lead with a score of 21-8, but kills from Niehus and Moore paired with two aces from Tenley Buddenhagen brought the score to 21-13.
Krull brought Harrisburg to set point at 24-15, Schimke took one last point in the set for Huron before Avery Kirky ended it at two sets to one in favor of Harrisburg.
Keeping it close in the fourth set, the teams were tied from the start. Fikse and Cain took a couple kills to bring the score to 9-8, but Schimke took her tenth kill to tie the score at 9-9. Both teams continued to stay within a two point lead tying back and forth, until Wassink takes her seventeenth kill to make the score 18-15. Huron called a time out and Harrisburg returned with a service error, but picked the pace back up to 20-16.
The Harrisburg Tigers dominated again toward the end of the fourth set. Niehus kept Huron going with her 10th kill but the luck ended there as the final set ended at 25-19 to Harrisburg.
“Even though this was a loss, I’m really happy with where the team is headed right now, we’re going to try really hard to recover really quickly by the time we get back to Huron and focus on hosting Watertown,” Buddenhagen said.
Huron will host Watertown on Tuesday. The match, which begins at 7 p.m. at Huron Arena, will be the Breast Cancer Awareness Night match for the Tigers.
