Wallace earns hard fought win on senior night
Courtesy photo/ Wallace Volleyball seniors Destiny Angle, Makayla Carlson, Kayla Bayer, Halei Ungerbuehler, Kayla Slater, Jen Hayman, and team manager Aby Berger honored before the game on Friday for senior night.
Photos by Chanse Watson/ Jen Hayman goes up for a block during Friday’s game against Genesis Prep.
Destiny Angle gets low to earn a dig in Thursday’s game against Clark Fork.
Halei Ungerbuehler jumps for a spike.
Makayla Carlson sets the ball so that Wallace can go on the attack.
Crunch time! Coach Anali Spooner calls a crucial timeout in Friday’s game to regroup the lady miners.
WALLACE — The Wallace High School Volleyball team wrapped up regular season play last Friday when the defeated the Genesis Prep Jaguars in an exciting five-set battle.
This win was the second game in a back-to-back home stand where they lost in three sets to the Clark Fork Wampus Cats the night before.
“I thought we played really well,” head coach Anali Spooner said after Friday’s win.
“The first two games were the best, obviously. Second two we struggled a little more. Fifth one we came out on top- so exciting!”
The Lady Miners (7-8, 5-5 league) were once again lead by the strong overall play of Senior Destiny Angle.
In addition to powering the offense with six kills and six aces, Angle also racked up ten digs to provide strong defense.
All the seniors, including Angle, were honored before the game with a short ceremony where they were all presented with a small coronation of flowers.
Speaking of seniors, Spooner noted that Makayla Carlson was a strong leader for the team in this match.
Makayla posted strong numbers as well by leading the team in assists (six), plus two digs and one ace.
Wallace started out this nail bitter strong, stealing the first set 25-20.
The second set was much closer in-terms of play, but Wallace once again pushed for a 25-22 set win.
Showing tenacity and unwillingness to rollover though, the Jaguars would go on a 9-2 point run to start the third match.
Though the miners made a good effort to cut the lead down later on, it was too little to late and the third set would go to Genesis 25-18.
Things got even worse for the Miners in the fourth match when Genesis burst out of the gate with another multi-point run.
With the fourth match going to the visitors 13-25, it came down to a first-to-15 fifth match.
The first ten points were madness.
The two teams traded the lead several times until WHS used its strong serving to go on a short 4-1 run.
This run was just enough to get within grasping distance of the win.
After trading a couple more points, Wallace honored their seniors was a 15-11 set win and a 3-2 match victory.
Coming into the match, the rough 3-0 set sweep by league rival Clark Fork the night before was still in the back of the Lady Miners minds.
Coach Spooner made sure to not let the mistakes from that one follow her girls to Friday.
“I told the girls after that game that it was done and over with, we have to forget about it, its in the past, and we have to move forward.”
Wallace Volleyball will have their state play-in game on October 21 at 3 p.m. at Moscow High School against the undetermined #2 seed from the White Pine League.
The winner of this game will move onto the state tournament.