Nicolet outdistances Germantown in NSC volleyball showdown

Glendale - There are some things that Nicolet girls volleyball coach Dann Jacobson said to his team between the third and fourth games of his team's North Shore Conference championship showdown with Germantown on Oct. 6 that are not meant for publication.

But they served as mighty inspiration, Jacobson later noted, as the fit and strong Knights rallied from a two-games-to-one deficit for a thrilling 25-23, 20-25, 20-25, 25-21, 15-11 victory that put them in the driver's seat to dethrone the 2010 NSC titlist Warhawks.

"We have a very mature team," he said, "and among the stuff I told them was all the little technical things that they needed to do. We also did a little lineup switch. We moved Jessica Kloehn from middle to right side and Becca Olin from right side to the middle. We had done that against (Menomonee) Falls earlier in the year with some success and our blocking did improve immediately."

Conditioning pays off

But as mentioned, these Knights were also fit and strong.

"And maybe I'm wrong, but to me, they (the Warhawks) started looking tired between games four and five and we didn't."

And with that, somewhere assistant coach and conditioning expert Kalin von Treba Albrecht smiled a cunning little smile.

"I think we do more with conditioning than many other teams do around here," Jacobson said. "She (Albrecht) has a doctorate in physical therapy and knows what she's doing. The kids are doing a lot of stairs, a lot of weights."

All things that help out toward the end of a grueling five-game match.

With the win, the fourth-ranked Knights will likely get the top seed in this Saturday's North Shore Conference tournament in Cedarburg. A catastrophic failure would have to occur for the team not to win the league title. Ninth-ranked Germantown would have to win the tournament and Nicolet finish third just to pull the Warhawks into a tie for the overall title.

Jacobson is pretty sure that's not going to happen.

"Last year, Germantown pushed us and we fell back," said Jacobson. "This year, they pushed and we went toe-to-toe with them. It was two senior-dominated teams. They have their D1 (collegiate) players and we have ours. It was exactly what you wanted in a match."

With just the right amount of inspiration.

Fourth game turning point

The Knights' body language was dispirited after the discouraging third game but the conditioning paid off. Nicolet went up 8-3 and never looked back and in the shortened fifth game, they went up 5-1 and also cruised home.

It was a stunning turnaround.

"I'm not sure what happened," veteran Germantown coach Dian Harrod said. "We pretty much played our game, but we just had too many hitting errors. I think we had 26 attacks (kill attempts) go out of bounds and that's just way too many."

"Frankly, it should have never gotten to four games. Just too many mental mistakes. We had our hands on it (the dual meet title) but we didn't keep it."

Settter Dana Kenney had a school match record 61 assists to lead the Knights, while all-stater Melissa Morello, who was playing with a debilitating case of the flu, still had 21 kills and 27 digs. She got help from middle hitter Krystalyn Goode, who Jacobson said "Played the best match of her life" after recording 18 kills with only three errors.

The secret weapon of the night, however, was sophomore Angie Morello, as she had 15 kills.

"I told her, that it was going to be her night," Jacobson said. "She was just very aggressive offensively and defensively all night."

Jacobson kept coming back to the conditioning.

"I think if you look at our recent history, when we go to five games, we've won a lot more matches than we've lost," he said. "We're the type of team that can go the distance."

All the way to a league title.