Cavaliers rally past Bulldogs

COLDWATER - After losing the first set to Celina 25-21, Coldwater woke up.

The Cavaliers won the next two sets 25-11 and 25-8 and then rallied from down 13-8 to win the fourth set 25-19 to take the non-conference match against their Mercer County neighbor on Tuesday night at the Palace.

The Bulldogs played well in the opening set, keeping the Cavaliers off-balanced after coming back from a 5-2 deficit early. Cora Lutz stepped up as Coldwater paid close attention to Alyssa Hoyng at the net. Lutz had six kills and a block in the opening set as Celina took the lead at 18-17 and used solid serving from Hoyng and Paige Sutter to pull away and snap Coldwater's streak of 15 winning sets.

"We did a nice job of executing offense to get (Coldwater) out of system a little bit," Celina coach Amy Sutter said. "We blocked really well and they were making their own errors. We got our hands in their face early and they hit some balls out of bounds."

"We didn't execute, but give credit to Celina. They had a lot to do with that," Coldwater coach Mike Etzler said. "They played confident and relaxed. They had us tight."

Coldwater stormed back in the next two sets. Danielle Welsch served up three straight points to put Coldwater up 10-5. Later, Katie McKibben had five straight service points, thanks in large part to a pair of Tasha Kahlig kills to make it 19-7. Kahlig later had a pair of aces to inch the Cavaliers closer to set point, which came on a Paige Hartings block.

The Cavaliers put up a more impressive effort in the third set. Allison Sudhoff had five service points in a row to make it 17-6 and then McKibben followed with a service run of four straight to make it 22-7.

"We decided to make a few adjustments here and there," Etzler said. "That helped."

"All of the sudden, one mistake became two. Two mistakes became three. Before you knew it, we were making hitting errors and couldn't get the pass to the setter," Sutter said.

Celina snapped back at the start of the fourth set as Coldwater had trouble hitting the ball in a repeat of the first set. Four straight hitting errors during a Sutter serving run put Celina up 10-5 and then a hitting error made it 13-8 before Hartings tallied a kill to get the serve back.

"I think we came out with an attitude of 'What do we have to lose?' " Sutter said. "We didn't just want to hand it to them, especially with how we played in the second and third sets. I think they let go of some of that anxiety and said 'What the heck. We're going to play as hard as we can.' "

The Cavaliers started clawing back and finally tied the set at 16-16 with a Sudhoff ace. After trading points, Kahlig, Hartings and Taylor Siefring had consecutive kills to put Coldwater in front 21-17. After a Celina timeout, McKibben served up her fourth ace of the night to make it 21-17. A Celina hitting error made it 22-17 before Lutz stopped the run, albeit only temporarily as Kahlig later closed out the match with her fourth ace of the match.

"We went back to making errors again," Etzler said. "Good thing was we were down and fought back."

Hartings had 10 kills and 10 blocks for Coldwater. Kahlig added 15 kills and 21 digs and Welsch added 10 kills.

Lutz finished with seven kills for Celina. Logan Boley and Paige Sutter each had 10 digs with Sutter recording 20 assists.

Both teams are back in league play Thursday. Coldwater (15-1) travels to New Bremen with a share of first place in the MAC on the line. Celina (6-8) returns to the Intermediate School for a WBL match with Wapakoneta.