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New Bremen's Ava Trentman and Parkway's Naomi Knapke battle for a ball at the net.
NEW BREMEN - It may be postseason baseball time for most sports fans, but for Diana Kramer, it's her own version of the World Series: postseason volleyball.
With a week remaining in the regular season, New Bremen kept its share of the Midwest Athletic Conference lead in fighting off a tenacious Parkway squad in three sets - 25-19, 25-15, 25-12 - on Thursday night at the Nest.
The win moves the Cardinals to 7-1 in MAC play and 15-4 overall. Parkway drops to 11-9 and 2-5 in league play.
"I think we're starting to click on the right cylinder," said Kramer. "It's the month of October. For so many people, October is playoff baseball. But for us, it's go-time."
The first two sets had about the same start: New Bremen would jump out to a healthy lead, only for Parkway to come back and make things interesting.
New Bremen's Amelia Dammeyer stretches to keep the ball from hitting the floor against Parkway.
In the opener, New Bremen was up 15-7 after an ace by Amelia Dammeyer, but the Panthers began clawing back gradually before a block by Cami Langenkamp got the Panthers to within two at 21-19, when the Cardinals' Mary Rindler got a kill to get a point back and her team the serve. Amelia Dammeyer got an ace, followed by kills from Rindler and Olivia Heitkamp to close out the set.
A pair of Paige Stephenson kills helped the Panthers open the second set with a 3-0 lead, but back came the Cardinals during Melina Schrader's seven-point service run. Ava Trentman broke a 5-all tie with a kill, followed by a lift on Parkway, back-to-back aces and then a hitting error and a Mia Hirschfeld kill to make it 11-5 New Bremen before the Cardinals lost the serve. A four-point run by Heitkamp thanks to two aces and two Trentman kills made the score 16-7. Parkway got as close as 17-11, but could not close the gap any further.
Parkway's Paige Stephenson goes up for the spike as New Bremen's Melina Schrader (1) defends.
"We did a good job on serve-receive those first two sets," said Parkway coach Jordan Henkle. "Thought we could be a little more aggressive because they have a great defense and (Schrader) runs a great offense. We knew we had to be aggressive as possible. I thought we capitalized on their errors and not making a lot of our own to stick around."
A Brittyn Bruns kill started set three for Parkway, but the Cardinals quickly put the set - and match - out of reach thanks to a five-point service run by Keira Steininger. New Bremen was ahead 21-8 before settling down at the end, ending the match on a kill by Heitkamp.
"(New Bremen's) a great team and does a lot of really great stuff," said Henkle. "You can't beat yourself when you're playing someone (that's) really good."
"Parkway's a really young team," said Kramer. "But they've got some great upperclassmen that are great leaders and Jordan is one of the best coaches around. We just kept grinding. We played to earn points tonight and everybody stepped up."
Heitkamp finished with 16 kills for New Bremen. Rindler had seven kills and four blocks and Trentman had seven kills. Schrader dished out 34 assists and Dammeyer and Steininger each had 11 digs.
Stephenson had six kills for Parkway with Emmery Temple recording eight digs.
New Bremen travels to Arcanum on Saturday. Parkway wraps up the regular season next week with MAC matches at St. Henry on Tuesday and home with New Knoxville next Thursday.
