Less than a year ago, the Bonduel Bears competed at the WIAA girls state volleyball tournament in Green Bay.
After finishing second behind Amherst in the Central Wisconsin Conference-East standings with a 6-1 mark, the Bears went on to win regional and sectional championships before advancing to state for the first time in program history.
It’s a different story for the Bears this season in their five CWC-East matches, however; the team fell to 1-4 in conference play Sept. 30 after dropping three of four games to Iola-Scandinavia in Iola.
The Thunderbirds opened the match with a 25-16 win. Bonduel evened the score with a 25-22 win in the second set, but Iola-Scandinavia answered with wins of 25-13 and 25-19 to improve to 4-1 in conference play.
Bonduel had opened its CWC-East schedule with losses to Shiocton, Amherst and Wittenberg-Birnamwood before picking up a win over Menominee Nation.
Two of the team’s CWC-East losses — to Shiocton and Amherst — went all the way to five games.
“There’s obviously some really good competition here,” coach Abby Krull said. “Many teams in our conference have been playing really well. There are a lot of scores going to four or five (games), so it’s pretty tight competition.”
Bonduel trailed the Thunderbirds by as many as 11 points in the first set, 12 points in the third and eight points in the fourth while also playing from behind for most of the second game.
“We struggled a little with our serve-receive, and we’re playing a lot of defense due to that,” Krull said. “If we can get that cleaned up a little bit, that’ll help us a lot. We just have to get back to grinding in practice and focus on our serve-receive and being ready to go when your name is called.”
The Bears had to replace five seniors from last year’s team.
“Three of them were starters, and they may have been three- or four-year starters,” Krull said. “We have some experience back, but it’s one, maybe two years on varsity.”
Bonduel has upcoming CWC-East matches against Manawa on Oct. 7 and Weyauwega-Fremont on Oct. 14.
“It’s just a matter of making sure that we’re peaking at the end of the season,” Krull said. “We have a ways to go yet and some improvements to make, but you want to be at your best at the end of the season. That’ll be our goal.”
