WEST BRANCH – Ogemaw Heights girls volleyball team reached the championship match of the district tournament and gave Gladwin all it could handle before falling in a five-set marathon, 17-25, 25-22, 18-25, 25-22, 11-15.
Heights opened the districts with a 3-0 win over Standish-Sterling, 25-18, 25-16, 25-23 and topped Tawas in three as well, 25-17, 25-9, 25-17 in the semifinals to march into the finals.
The Falcons enjoyed a successful season with a 26-22 record in dual match competition, and should only be better next year. Without a conference the Falcons use the regular season as a spring board for the tournament.
Senior Carley Bulow led the team with 797 set assists and served at 97.2 percent on the season, sophomore attacker Arika Hasty had a team-high 374 kills while senior Faith Ignasiak followed her with 283 kills and senior Ashlyn Dantzer finished with 206.
“We started playing our best ball right there at the end,” second-year coach David Luptowski said. “I had six returning seniors this year. I believe in a nine-player rotation, and I moved up a sophomore, Arika Hasty. She came up huge for us to fill that left side spot for us.
“In the middle of the year I had an injury to my middle hitter, so I had to move up another sophomore, Audrey Soares. Actually, it turned out really well. She progressed tremendously through the last half of the season.
“She just did everything we needed her to do. We have some work to do for next year, but I think she’s going to be a great edition. We had some great youth, and we had some awesome talent.
“Our intensity was up the whole tournament. The place was just rocking in that last set. It was a sight to see. That’s the way districts are supposed to be, with all the energy on both sides.”
The Falcons played a lot of tough opponents in the regular season, a lot of Division 1 schools as well as some weighty competition at tournaments down in the Saginaw area, meeting up with some real powerhouse teams.
Despite losing six seniors, the Falcons expect to continue their upward trend next year.
“Our program is better deep right now,” Luptowski said. “Our junior varsity team won like three or four tournaments this year. I did bring up four sophomores for the tournament, and one had to step up and play in the finals because I had an injury to one of my hitters.
“At one time I had four sophomores on the floor, so they got a little bit of experience in a big game like that. That’s definitely going to help us out.”
Luptowski said the focus in the off-season will be to get everyone playing together as a team, and trusting each other. He believes the Falcons will be pretty strong again.
“When I took over last year, I told them I wanted to build a program that starts down at the lower levels,” Luptowski said. “Our freshman team did phenomenal. They won pretty much every tournament they were in. They are all starting to buy into what I want from them.”
