A comeback that will be talked about for a long time to come took place last Thursday as Westside defeated Lincoln North Star in five sets. The Warriors went down 2-0 after and then proceeded to win three sets straight. The first two sets lost both had to go to extra points, ending with Northstar getting to 31 and 29 points respectively. That goes to show how evenly matched these teams were and moreover how much of a battle it was for Westside to come back and win. Head Coach Andrew Wehrli discussed what this comeback win means to him and his team.
“It just feels like everybody shows up and brings their best game every time they play us,” Wherli said. “Which is awesome. I mean, we love that we’re getting stretched. We had a couple opportunities in the first and second set to put it away. I mean, we went into extra points in every one of the sets, and we couldn’t quite find the point when we needed it. But then coming into set three, we changed our lineup a little bit, and that’s really helped solve some of the problems. It was fun in the fifth set, I mean, to bury yourself seven to one, and then to call a timeout and see them come out and take ownership over what was happening on the court was great.”
The story this year has been six foot three senior captain Ashlyn Paymal. Paymal is committed to play at the University of Creighton this fall and so far she has been indispensable for the Warriors. Against North Star, led the team with 24 kills as well as attack attempts with 48. The outside hitter believes her team had a switch in their mindset going into the third set that helped them turn things around and come out on top.
“Yeah, we really had the mindset that we were just going to go out there and play for each other,” Paymal said. “It was really important to hold the top spot in the state, it’s really important to just not let games like this go. Even though they’re a really good team, we still needed to battle back.”
WIth this win came lots of obvious adversity. The most clear example of this would be the uphill battle of coming back after being down two sets. Paymal has led her teams to many close games like this and they have proven themselves as a tough team before. She believes that this groundwork of tenacity, makes the comeback all that easier.
“It’s just crazy to see how much we’ve come throughout the season,” Paymal said. “Even though, like I said, they’re a really good team, we just knew that we’re better and that we have the talent it takes to push and win the best three sets.
This match had the Warriors missing a key player on the court. Senior Liv Odvody was out due to pneumonia. Odvody was replaced by sophomore Myla Deats. Coach Wehrli talks about the differences this caused on the court, as well as what Deats could be for the future of the program.
“Liv Odvody had pneumonia this week,” Wehrli said. “She actually spent a day in the hospital. So, I mean, we had to make some adjustments. So we had Myla Deats playing, which was great. She’s definitely our future. However, she just doesn’t have that experience that Liv does. So we actually flipped our middles going into the third set, because we weren’t getting a lot of points in two of our rows. So bottom line, by making the switch, it helped us even out our kill distribution and slow down those two big rows that they had with their middle up”
What most are wondering at this point is, as a coach, what do you say to your team after that second set that allows them to mount such a comeback? All that Wehrli did was remind his team of the fundamentals and encourage them to keep pushing them.
I just reminded them that everybody’s coming at us,” Wehrli said “Everybody’s bringing their best game. It’s not like we’ve lost by eight points. We had a couple things not go our way. I just reminded them that at the end of the day you win transition. You do the little things, and the score is gonna take care of itself, and it did.”
The Warriors will travel to Papillion-LaVista South Tuesday, Oct 8th to defend their newly appointed number one state ranking.
