SWANTON — Otsego volleyball swept Maumee, 25-18, 25-19, 25-14, in a Division II district semifinal at Swanton High School’s Kevin J. McQuade Gymnasium Tuesday.
Next up for the Knights — Northern Buckeye Conference champion Lake, a team that Otsego lost to twice, once in three sets and once in four sets.
“We just need to bring like we did this game into our next game and I fully believe that we can do that,” said Otsego senior middle blocker Kora Rollins.
The Flyers and Knights will face off in McQuade Gymnasium at 6 p.m. Thursday for the district championship and the right to advance to the regional tournament. Both teams enter the game with 19-6 records.
“We saw them twice in the season already — first we got swept and the second time we went four with them,” Smith said.
“We’re looking to hopefully take that match but it’s going to be gritty. We’ll see them on Thursday, we’ll have a tough practice on Wednesday, and it will be guns-a blazing. Here we go.”
Rollins wants to see her team get one for the five seniors, including herself.
“This is probably the best season ever that I’ve had ever since I moved to Otsego,” Rollins said. “I feel like we are more of a family this year. Everybody cares for everybody, we actually play together, and I feel like we can go very far with this team.”
First, the Knights had to get past Maumee (12-13), a team that has beaten the Knights in past seasons but Otsego prevailed twice in NBC games during this year’s regular season.
“We knew coming in, we saw them already twice this season but they’ve beaten us before and we knew that we did not want that route this time around and we wanted to sweep them,” Smith said.
“The girls worked really hard in practice yesterday, we worked on our system a ton, and we took that up in this game and that was the deciding factor.”
In the first two sets, the Panthers seemed to have a path to winning at some point or other, but Otsego pulled away both times.
In the first set behind the serving of Maumee senior Hannah Binkowski, the Panthers grabbed a 9-7 lead, but Otsego went on a 12-2 run to go up 19-11 on a kill by senior outside hitter Kendall St. John and the Knights never looked back.
In the second set the Knights went up 10-2, but block assists by Maumee freshman Brooke Kwaitkowski and junior Kennedi King got the Panthers back to within one, 14-13.
That is when Otsego senior Emily Genson served the Knights to a 6-0 run, including three aces by Genson and a kill by senior Faith Keifer.
In the third, an ace by Kwaitkowski put Maumee up, 4-3, but Otsego pulled away, cruising to an 11-point margin of victory.
Coach Smith also noted that all four teams participated in the district tournament were NBC members, and six of the eight NBC teams qualified for district tournament action, including Eastwood in D-III and Oak Harbor in another D-II district.
“The NBC is super competitive,” Smith said. “It is fantastic that four of our teams even made it to districts. That normally doesn’t happen, and it is just phenomenal.”
