St. Henry’s Karlee Buschur blasts a point past a Fort Recovery blocker in Saturday’s OHSAA Division VI regional final won by the Redskins at Northmont High School. (Press Pros Feature Photos)
St. Henry used two of their best sets of the year, back to back, to cruise by MAC rival Fort Recovery in straight sets and win the Division VI regional final Saturday at Northmont High School.
Clayton, OH – St. Henry volleyball coach Tricia Rosenbeck admits to being a ‘nervous Nellie’.
And when she got up Saturday morning, just hours before the Division VI regional final with Fort Recovery, she had those old familiar sensations of what might go wrong today.
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“I was stressed out this morning,” Rosenbeck admitted later. “I knew that Fort Recovery is an athletic team, and they’re very young…but they can do a lot of good things. And we knew that they could do that to us if we stepped back, at all.
“I knew that we would have to play our best to win today.”
Bingo. Like she rubbed a magic lamp and was granted a wish, a few hours later Rosenbeck’s Redskins (22-5) came out and played better than their best so far this year, crushing Fort Recovery in straight sets – 25-17, 25-3, and 25-8 – to advance to next week’s Division VI state semi-final where they’ll play Independence High School at the Nutter Center, in Fairborn.
And to her nerves, Fort Recovery did some good things in the first set before shrinking at the end when St. Henry began to settle in with a powerfully aggressive serve. The set was tied at 12-12 when the Redskins found that extra gear to go on a 5-0 run. It flipped the momentum of the entire match, and they took the opening set, 25-17.
But it was the second set that opened eyes of the near-one thousand onlookers who showed up to watch. St. Henry came out firing with the serve, precise passing, and accurate hitting – what coaches call playing ‘in system’ – and within minutes owned a 13-0 lead before Fort Recovery finally scored. The Indians wouldn’t score again until St. Henry led 20-1, and the set ended with the most lopsided deficit in the district and regional round of the tournament, 20-3.
Molly Wendel shows her defensive skills during the Division VI regional finals on Saturday.
“It’s awesome when you can put everybody’s abilities together like that and play as a team,” senior leader Molly Wendel would say later. “And it always makes us excel in games like this.”
But it’s easier said than done, and more often than not…a fluke. At this stage of the tournament, against a competitive opponent, it’s not likely that someone can play that well for that long.
And more impressively, in the third set St. Henry took up where they had left off in the second. Fort Recovery was more competitive at the start, trailing 9-6…but that’s when Rosenbeck’s Redskins again found that gear from the previous game and scored 16 of the next 18 points to win the set, and the regional title, 25-8. The match, start to finish, took less than an hour.
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“We had the momentum,” said fellow senior Olivia Gast. “Everybody just did their role and we played well. It showed. We went on that big run.”
“And it’s awesome to do that for our community because there were a lot of people here today,” added Wendel. “And it will be insane at State because they’re all going to be there behind us.”
More of a good thing…Karlee Baumer added points to the total in the second set of Saturday’s match with Fort Recovery.
And back to Rosenbeck and her goal throughout the season over how to get an obviously talented and athletic group as she has to finally play predictably when it means the most.
She stressed aggressive play, aggressive serving, and efficiency with what she terms ‘first contact’ with the ball…the serve/receive, pass and attack regimen known as playing in system. Saturday, sometime near the end of the second set it became obvious to her that her worries, for the moment at least, were over.
“We took them out of the match from the service line,” she offered. “We served so well today, our best performance of the season. We just found a way to control the whole game, and Fort Recovery couldn’t put anything together because of what we were doing. We were aggressive, they were giving us some free balls, we were spreading it out, all the hitters were involved, and when that happens..when we get everyone involved it’s just really hard to keep up with us.”
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And there was nothing that Fort Recovery could do on Saturday to turn things around…stop the momentum…and get back in the match after the 13-0 spurt to open the second set.
Olivia Gast and teammate Lexi Buschur danced the winner’s dance prior to match point.
“And that’s a credit to my girls,” added Rosenbeck. “They were mentally focused and ready to play the way we needed to play today. And it’s really fun as a coach when you don’t have to say anything. They were doing all the work, and they knew exactly what we needed to do to win. And they did it today.”
In her tenth year as coach at St. Henry, she and the Redskins have known close calls and frustration, both at the regional and state tournament levels. Rosenbeck and the Redskins lost in the Division IV Final in 2021, to New Knoxville in four sets. With seven titles to their credit, all-time, there’s another personal goal by Rosenbeck to finally break through and join the ranks of other MAC schools who have recently won – Versailles, New Bremen, New Knoxville, and Coldwater. St. Henry’s last title came in 2011, under then coach Diana Kramer.
“It’s not easy to get to the State Tournament, and we’re not finished yet.” – St Henry coach Tricia Rosenbeck (above)
“It’s not an easy thing to get to the state tournament,” she laughed. “So for our girls, and to know that it was our goal at the beginning of the season…and we’re not finished yet…that’s what these girls want to do.
“They want to win that state title. We’ve been preparing all year with mental training, talking about how to deal with pressure, with setbacks, and I think they’re mentally ready to handle what’s going to get thrown at them next week.”
“We’ve worked so hard,” added Gast before leaving the building on Saturday. “Every day we’ve done the work to get here…for our team and for our community.”
First impressions on Saturday were that hard work does pay off, if occasionally it doesn’t show up all at once. It’s the journey, the smart people say…and not the destination. But let there be no mistake. At St. Henry they’ve had enough road time.
It’s time to get there and go.
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