Lady Hawks, HTC learn lessons at Wapello tourney

WAPELLO — The Wapello Tournament provided some early-season lessons for the Holy Trinity and Central Lee volleyball teams on Tuesday.

Holy Trinity, which was No. 2 in Class 1A in the IGHSAU preseason rankings, went 1-2, including a loss to Central Lee as well as No. 15 (Class 3A) Wilton, but coach Melissa Freesmeier wanted her team to take away the positives from their final set of the night while learning all that went wrong before that.

Central Lee split its four matches, including the win over Holy Trinity, but coach Amy Cook wanted her team to take away how slow starts kept the Hawks from perhaps a bigger prize.

Holy Trinity, which finished second in the Class 1A state tournament last season, has plenty of key players back, but is also breaking in some new players, and that showed plenty of times in their three matches in this tournament which opened their season — a two-set sweep of Columbus, a two-set loss to Central Lee, and a two-set loss to Wilton.

“We came out ready to play and were doing some of the things we wanted to do, but at the same time, we could be a very young team, and tonight we showed our youth,” Freesmeier said.

Freesmeier brought back starters Anna Bendlage, Presley Myers, Teagan Snaadt and Adalyn Kruse, but there were still communication issues that left openings in the defense, and mishits on opportunities to score points.

“I knew that we were going to have growing pains,” Freesmeier said. “You take some of those seniors out of our lineup from last year (Mary Kate Bendlage, Natalie Randolph and Taegan Denning), and now we've got young, young kids. They didn't look young some of the time, and then we looked very young at others.”

Freesmeier was, in her words, “ticked off” at how the Crusaders played in the 21-11, 21-16 loss to Central Lee.

“It was just the way our demeanor was,” she said. “We were down, we didn’t look ready to go, and that’s not us.”

The struggles continued in the Crusaders’ 21-14, 22-20 loss against Wilton, when they fell down 10-0 in the opening set.

“We could have laid down and died right there, but we fought back,” Freesmeier said. “That’s why I told them to take away that second set (against Wilton) and remember that more than the losses.”

Central Lee (5-4) advanced out of pool play because of the win over the Crusaders and a two-set win over Columbus. Then, in the 25-19, 27-25 loss to Notre Dame in the third-place match, the Hawks battled back in the first set and had a chance to win the second set.

“We couldn’t start out slow in some of these matches and we did,” Cook said. “We started fast against Holy Trinity, and we won. But we didn’t start well in our first match against Wilton, and we didn’t start well (against Notre Dame).

“Our biggest downfall is we need to stay in the play. Every single play, we need to stay in the game. That's really what we take away from today.”

Cook liked the way her team played against the Crusaders.

“Any time you can beat a team like Holy Trinity, it’s a good thing,” she said. “We saw some good teams here, and playing them is only going to make us better.”

Both coaches recognized how early it was in the season.

“I think we learned a lot,” Cook said.

Freesmeier said the best advice to the team came from Snaadt, who is a senior.

“She goes, ‘You know what, guys? When we're good, we're really good,’” Freesmeier said. “And she said, ‘But we're not there yet, but we're going to get there.’ And so, there's a senior leader going up telling their team that it's going to happen, we're going to click. It's going to be OK. And, they were positive when they left. And that's what I wanted.”