Local Sports
Wednesday, November 04, 2009
Seniors guide H-L into regional tournamentSPORTS EDITOR
BASCOM -- Erin Dircksen thought trouble was brewing with her Hopewell-Loudon Lady Chieftains before last Saturday's district championship match.
“No one was talking and everyone had this very serious look, which is so not them before games,” the third-year Hopewell-Loudon coach said. “(Normally) they're having conversations, they're joking around, they're talking about what they're doing that night or what they're doing that weekend. ... I was mortified.”
But things turned out well enough for the Lady Chieftains, who defeated Tiffin Calvert in three sets and made their way back to the Division IV regional at Elida after a one-year absence.
Hopewell-Loudon, 24-1 and the state's second-ranked team in Division IV, will face Kalida (16-7) in Thursday's 6 p.m. regional quarterfinal at the Elida Fieldhouse. Fourteenth-ranked Columbus Grove (19-3) will meet Antwerp (19-6) in the second semifinal. The winners will return for Saturday's 2 p.m. title match, with a trip to the state tournament on the line.
Notable by their absence from Elida is Marion Local, the top-ranked defending state champion, which this year ended up in the Versailles regional.
Dirksen said it will seem strange not having Marion Local or another strong team from the Mid-Ohio Athletic Conference in the house, but she certainly doesn't expect an easy path to state.
“You still have the pressure that you have to show up,” Dircksen, the Midland Athletic League coach of the year, said. “At that level, everyone's good. Everyone worked their butts off and they're there for a reason. But at the same time you don't have that MAC school there pushing you even farther.”
Senior leadership is what has pushed the Lady Chieftains -- all of whom are back from last year's team that lost to Calvert in the 2008 district final -- to their present level, Dircksen said.
“We have six seniors on the team and that makes things different,” she said. “My first year here, we had seven seniors. Seniors don't like to lose, especially at tournament time because you lose and you're done. You don't come back; you turn in your uniform. It's the last time you get to play with these girls and represent your school. I think having seniors on your team is the driving force.”
And as with so many coaches in so many sports, Dircksen preaches defense as the key to claiming championships.
“If you don't have a good defense to stop the other team, you can't run an offense and get the ball to the person who's going to score the points for your team,” she said.
Seniors Alexis Creeger and Brianna Richey key the Lady Chieftains' defensive play, Dircksen said. Creeger, the team's libero, led Hopewell-Loudon with 295 digs in the regular season, while Richey made 227.
Richey, a 5-foot-8 outside hitter, also added 159 kills and 60 aces on her way to first-team All-MAL recognition.
But for Creeger and Richey to even have to make back-row plays, hitters had to get the ball past MAL player of the year Brittany Egbert, a 6-foot senior who collected 276 kills and 122 blocks.
The Lady Chieftain hitters got the ball primarily from senior setter Mary Ellen McAllister, who notched 373 assists.
In its regional semi, Hopewell-Loudon will see a Kalida squad that downed Cory-Rawson in four games to win the Lima district. Julia Fuerst and Tricia Horstman had 13 kills apiece for the Wildcats in the title match, while Emily Turnwald and Halie Zenz recorded 22 and 17 assists, respectively.
Dircksen said she knows little about Kalida or the other teams in the regional, and that's by design.
“Sometimes that's kind of a good thing for me because I can't sit there and dwell on, 'OK, they have this particular person and they can do this,'” she said. “I like to focus on what we can do and how we can improve. If we come up against a better team, then we come up against a better team. But at least I know that my girls were prepared to the best that I could get them. And it's put on their shoulders that they have to get their jobs done, regardless of who they face.”
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Ph: (419) 435-6641 • Fax: (419) 435-9073
113 E. Center St. • P.O. Box 947
Fostoria, OH 44830
The Findlay Publishing Company
P.O. Box 609
Findlay, OH 45839-0609
Phone: (419) 422-5151
www.findlaypublishing.com
Please read our privacy guidelines
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