ONTARIO — Ottawa-Glandorf’s playoff run ran out of gas after the Parma Padua Franciscan overwhelmed and outlasted the Titans 3-1 in the Division II regional semifinals Wednesday night.
The Titans end their year with a 22-4 mark. The Bruins move on to play Norwalk in the regional final at 2 p.m. Saturday.
Ottawa-Glandorf head coach Ann Ellerbrock said her team put up a strong effort but said at times the Titans seemed tired due to the long rallies that occurred throughout the four sets.
“Did you guys ever see so many rallies go back and forth?” Ellerbrock asked. “I could tell after five back and forth times that our girls were gassed. We are not used to playing these type of games. Our games go so quickly sometimes. We are used to playing high caliber fast games and they seemed kind of fatigued at the end.”
The Titans began the contest by capturing the first set, 25-20. In that first set, the Titans took advantage of a number of Bruin miscues to go up 8-4 in the early part of the set. However, Padua began to eliminate those mistakes and closed the gap to 14-13 and the Bruins would eventually tie the match at 18-18. But the Bruin miscues were not quite out of their system and the Titans took advantage of this to outscore Padua 7-3 to garner the first set.
“We did make a lot of errors in the first,” Bruins head coach James BeHarry said. “We didn’t do a good job of serving and defensively we were struggling with our serve-receive. I felt we weathered the storm and got it back to 18 and we had four hitting errors after that and then came back again and then they put us away.”
After the first set defeat, BeHarry said he didn’t make any adjustments but reiterated to his team to cut down on the errors. The Bruins listened because after dropping the first set, Padua came out even more determined.
The Titans tried to keep that momentum going in the second set as the two teams battled to a 14-14 tie. But soon the Bruins began to assert themselves on the front line and went on a 7-2 run to open up a 21-16 advantage that the Titans could not overcome and fell 25-17.
“In set two we pulled it out a little bit,” DeHarry said. “We always say we want to get it out a little bit so the other team doesn’t have enough gas at the end of the race.”
During that pivotal second set, Ellerbrock called an early timeout and showed some rare emotion to try and rally her troops but the pep talk could not stem the tide.
“I am not a very passionate, excitable coach,” Ellerbrock said. “I let my assistant coach handle that. But when I see a ball drop and no one is going to go for it I get a little passionate. This is the regional tournament. You have got to bring your A game. I didn’t want them to have any regrets.”
With the second set win and the momentum, the Bruins jumped out to a 10-6 lead and the Titans would never get closer than four points the remainder of the way as Padua began to flex its state powerhouse muscles.
By the fourth set, the Bruins were in full control and opened up an early 10-5 lead. By this point, the Titans were running on fumes after numerous highly contested rallies and Ottawa-Glandorf never seemed to make a dent in the Bruins’ lead as the Titans got no closer than seven points of the lead.
“We were able to in sets two, three and four after about five or eight points we were able to push it out to five or six points and then hold on,” DeHarry said.
The Bruins were powered by the hitting of Cierah Jackson and the defensive wall of Abby Leigh and Samantha Ott.
Kylie White had 13 kills and three blocks, Carly Alt had 11 kills and four blocks, Jordan Alt had 10 kills and five blocks, Emily Annesser had 21 assists, seven kills, three aces and 18 digs, Brooke Kleman had 51 digs and Kendra Kahle had 16 assists for O-G.
Norwalk 3, Celina 0
Norwalk eliminated Celina with a 25-16, 25-21, 25-23, victory over the Bulldogs on Wednesday night.
Celina finishes its season with a 17-9 record.
Alyssa Hoyng and Hannah Rasawehr had 12 kills each, Paige Sutter had 16 assists and four blocks, Hailey Langenkamp had 20 digs and Paige Duncan had 10 digs and 14 assists for Celina.
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