Two days after dropping its first North Eastern Conference match to Freedom, the Oconto Falls volleyball team needed a win to keep pace with Luxemburg-Casco in the conference standings.
Mission accomplished.
The Panthers headed to Little Chute on Oct. 2 and returned home with a 3-0 sweep of the Mustangs.
Oconto Falls never trailed in the match. After opening with 25-19 and 25-20 wins, the Panthers completed the sweep with a 25-14 win in the third set.
The Panthers improved to 5-1 in conference play. The win sets up a battle for first place with Luxemburg-Casco on Tuesday, Oct. 7, when Oconto Falls hosts the 6-0 Spartans.
Coach Rochell Otto said it was big for her team to bounce back after a five-set home loss to Freedom on Sept. 30.
“We needed to play clean and get back to where we were,” she said. “They played with more confidence and went up swinging hard. I was pretty confident that we were going to come and take care of business.”
The loss to Freedom came during homecoming week.
“I hate using that as an excuse, but there’s a lot going on,” Otto said. “It is what it is. There’s a lot of season left and a lot of big games coming up.”
The match with Luxemburg-Casco could determine the conference championship. Otto said the win over Little Chute gives her team confidence heading into the match with the Spartans.
“We are confident,” she said. “We just had a little hiccup in the road on Tuesday (against Freedom). We had to get over it and move on.”
The Panthers and Spartans already played each other in August at the Beast of the Northeast tournament at the Champion Center in Appleton. Oconto Falls took two of three games from the Spartans, but Otto said that was early in the season.
“We beat them in three, but it was a brawl,” she said. “I’m anticipating it’s going to be a brawl again.”
Oconto Falls improved its overall game record to 27-5 with the three wins over Little Chute, while the Spartans are 26-8 after sweeping Marinette on Oct. 2.
Otto doesn’t expect the conference championship to be decided until the final matches of the regular season in mid-October.
“There are a lot of big matches coming up,” she said. “Freedom has to play Waupaca. Waupaca has to play L-C, and we beat Waupaca in five (games). Everybody could be knocking off everybody.”
Successful seasons are nothing new to Oconto Falls’ volleyball program, as former coach Dawn Larsen took teams to state in 1998, 2007, 2011 and 2013.
“A lot of girls have put in a lot of time in the gym, and we have a huge junior group,” Otto said. “They’ve been together for a long time.”
“It starts with youth,” she continued. “We have 40 kids in the gym in fourth, fifth and sixth (grades), and they’re part of that program. They just keep coming. It’s huge to have that.”
