Bancroft-Rosalie wins Class D-1 title
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By GENE COTTER / Lincoln Journal Star
The road to the Class D-1 State Volleyball title started long before Saturday morning for third-ranked Bancroft-Rosalie.
In actuality, the first steps occurred just short of two months ago on the floor at Cedar Bluffs High School.
It was there, in the finals of the Cedar Bluffs Invitational, the Panthers (30-2) first realized they had a chance.
About the only thing missing from Humphrey St. Francis' Tascha Wemhoff’s uniform Saturday in the Class D-1 final was a cape.
Wemhoff, a 5-foot 5 sophomore, went flying through the air to make no less than four digs in the Flyers’ finals loss to Bancroft-Rosalie, drawing oohs and aahs for the crowd each time.
Seems it draws more than that from St. Francis coach Dean Korus.
“She does that all the time. You should see the bruises on that girl. I always ask her why she does that,” Korus said. “I ask her if she’s trying to be dramatic or get the attention of the crowd. She’ll dive. She’ll sprawl. She’s a hustler.”
Back in September Bancroft-Rosalie eked out a 2-games-to-1 victory over No. 4 Humphrey St. Francis . The same bunch of Flyers that had ended each of the Panthers’ last two volleyball and basketball seasons.
Saturday at Pershing Center, Bancroft-Rosalie parlayed that early season win into a 25-21, 25-21, 28-26 win over St. Francis, earning a first ever state championship.
” We’ve seen them before so we knew that we had to play it all the way out. The girls wanted it. They wanted it so bad,” Panthers coach Rebecca James said. “When we beat them earlier in the season the girls were like ‘oh my gosh, we beat them’. And I was like, ‘ya, you CAN beat them’. “
“This is like icing on the cake. We’ve beaten them twice now and I think they finally have the Humphrey St. Francis thing out of their system.”
From the outset it didn’t look like it would be near as easy as a sweep, however.
The Flyers (25-5) were playing in their fourth straight championship match and middle-hitter Rebecca Mausbach was banging away at will against the Panther defense.
Then, suddenly, a prolonged rally eventually resulted in a Paige Goeken kill and Bancroft-Rosalie was off to the races.
“We were really motivated by the fact they were picked to win. We went in knowing we had to beat them.,” Goeken said. “It was nerve-racking but we pushed through. We had to.”
Goeken finished the first set with seven kills and a block, four kills coming down the stretch as the Panthers rallied from a 19-14 deficit to the win.
Then, as the Bancroft-Rosalie defense continued to give Mausbach troubles, Katie Stansberry came to life, pounding out seven kills of her own in game two to push the Panthers to the edge of victory.
“We got outplayed in every phase of the game. They took us out of what we do well,” St. Francis coach Dean Korus said. “We kind of lost momentum. They took the air out of our sails and we just couldn’t get it back.”
Once Mausbach and fellow hitter Susan Rollman finally got untracked in game three, each hammering home six kills, the Flyers were able to rally.
Unfortunately for St. Francis, the Panthers were just too much.
Mausbach finished with 11 kills to lead the Flyers.
Stansberry paced the Panthers with 11 kills.
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Rhonda wrote on November 10, 2007 2:03 pm:
4BR wrote on November 11, 2007 11:51 am: