Trial and error pays off; Gilman 1st at Prentice

GILMAN VOLLEYBALL

For most teams, experimentation is a big part of early-season volleyball tournaments and some trial and error paid off nicely for the Gilman Pirates on Saturday.

A week of tweaking carried into the first couple rounds of Saturday’s Prentice Invitational, but it all came together in round two when the Pirates snuck out a 2-1 victory against the host Buccaneers, handing them their first loss. Gilman went on to go 5-0 for the day and bring home the tournament’s championship trophy.

Head coach Janice Komanec said she knew after Gilman’s Aug. 23 season-opening triangular that tinkering needed to be done.

“Our Thursday and Friday practices focused on some changes in offense and rotations,” Komanec said. “We were looking to return to our 5-1 offense with Abby Chaplinski leading that and moving Danielle Mann to the front middle to have a stronger more consistent presence there. We were also looking to move Claire Drier over to our left side as her attack strength and consistency has improved so much in these first weeks of practice.”

The changes didn’t bring immediate results. Gilman lost its first set to Butternut Saturday 25-22 before scrambling back to win the next two 25-18, 15-8.

“We pulled the last two games out, but it was clear we still needed to make some changes as we were still not quite flowing like we wanted to,” Komanec said. “We went into our match with Prentice making one more set of changes. We started out slow, dropping set one. However, everything started clicking after that. We pushed ahead dropping only one more set the rest of the day.”

Without question, the win over Prentice was the big one. The Buccaneers started the year with a 5-0, first-place showing at the Three Lakes Invitational on Aug. 22 and had swept Butternut in their first match Saturday. Prentice breezed to a 25-12 win in the first set, but Gilman stormed back 25-19 and 15-13 to take the match.

The Pirates had no trouble with Mellen in a 25-15, 25-11 sweep. They won the other key match of the day, taking down Mercer in three sets 25-20, 21-25, 15-10 and then finished things off by blowing by Flambeau 25-16, 25-9.

Drier led Gilman in kills for the day with 45 and she served a team-high 15 aces. Mann had 34 kills and added five aces. Bryn Hendricks had 16 kills, Jaylyn Orth had 14 and Chaplinski had 12. Chaplinski had 102 assists while back in her role as the primary setter. She also had seven aces, as did Kenlyn Kroeplin. Jaylen Copenhaver had three.

Mann and Orth had five block kills each, while Allie Olynick and Chaplinski had three each. Kayleigh James led Gilman with 35 digs. Chaplinski had 34, Drier had 32 and Mann had 23.

Komanec said the final solution was returning to the original 6-2 rotation the team had worked with during the summer, but tweaking it to work with a 5-1 system.

“I am so proud of these girls and what they were able to accomplish on Saturday, especially after the Wednesday loss and the many rotational and offensive changes we made in the days leading up to Saturday and even that morning,” she said.

Gilman has a couple of tough tests ahead of the start of Eastern Cloverbelt Conference play on Sept. 12. The Pirates are at Athens tonight, Thursday, and then host Abbotsford at 7:15 p.m. on Sept. 7.

1-1 in triangular

The Pirates found out on the morning of their scheduled season opener on Aug. 23 that their triangular was being moved from Thorp to their home gym, where air conditioning was a must.

Gilman wasn’t quite able to make full use of the home-court advantage, losing to Owen-Withee and beating Thorp in the annual neighborhood meet.

First-match kinks were evident in the 25-22, 25-22 loss to their Eastern Cloverbelt Conference rivals from Owen-Withee in the first round. The Pirates had chances to seize the momentum late in both sets but couldn’t do it, allowing the Blackhawks to steal both of them. Owen-Withee also swept Thorp to win the triangular Komanec said the Pirates weren’t sharp with their passing and, in her mind, that’s what led to the defeat.

“We struggled in our opening game with Owen Withee,” Komanec said. “Our passing was inconsistent and it kept us from being able to run our offense and use our hitters. We had some miscommunications and we weren’t flowing as a team. You could tell there were some first-game nerves.”

Gilman led game one 20-17 when Chaplinski’s winner capped a little surge, but Owen-Withee came back with three straight points. Gilman led 21-20, Owen-Withee scored three straight points, Gilman got one back on a Mann kill and two errors gave Owen-Withee the win.

Gilman got back into the game behind a serving run from James, turning a 10-6 deficit into an 11-10 lead. Owen-Withee went on a run to go up 15-13, Gilman scored four straight to go up 17-15, then Gilman went on a short spurt, capped by an Orth block, to go up 21-18. A Drier kill gave Gilman its last lead at 22-21. The Blackhawks scored four straight to complete the sweep.

The Pirates talked during the first week about the strength serving could be for them this season and it showed in the sweep over Thorp. Chaplinski started game one with a pair of aces and Kroeplin had two of them in the run that broke it open, pushing Gilman’s lead to 19-11. The Pirates finished the game out with a Drier kill at 25-17.

Chaplinski started the second set with another ace, then Mann went on a tear mid-game serving up five aces in a run that opened up a 17-5 lead. Drier added two more aces in the 25-8 final.

“We dominated our second match with Thorp,” Komanec said. “However, it was clear at the end of the night that there were some things we would need to be working out with our rotations and offense and that we needed to focus in on our passing in the next days of practice.”

For the night, Mann and Chaplinski led Gilman with six kills apiece, Drier, Olynick and Hendricks had five each. Chaplinski had 14 aces and Mann added 11.

Mann’s eight aces led the Pirates, Chaplinski had five and Drier and Kroeplin served four each. Drier was the team leader in digs with 18, while James had 17. Emilia Reid had two solo blocks.

The Gilman Pirates earned the championship trophy by going 5-0 in Saturday’s Prentice Invitational. Team members include Kylee Copenhaver, Jaylen Copenhaver, Kayleigh James, Kenlyn Kroeplin, Allison Olynick, Claire Drier, (back) Aubrey Steinbach, Abby Chaplinski, Danielle Mann, Emilia Reid, Bryn Hendricks, Jaylyn Orth and Alison Krizan.HEATHER ORTH PHOTO

Allison Olynick spikes the volleyball past Thorp’s Emma Leech during the Pirates’ 2-0 sweep on Aug. 23.MATT FREY/THE STAR NEWS