Bravettes battle hard to tip Big Sky

Everyone knows how it goes sometimes with high school sports.

Big win on Friday, followed by a long bus ride and an early morning arrival in Kalispell.

Before you know it, it's Saturday afternoon, Missoula Big Sky is in town and you've got to turn it on and play again.

Just about every single thing came hard for the Flathead Bravette volleyball team on Saturday.

Every point was difficult - and precious - but in the end the Bravettes (5-2, 10-4) were able to dig deep for a 30-28, 25-23, 25-18 Western AA sweep of the Eagles (0-7, 0-13).

Hannah Sackett led Flathead with 20 kills, Sarah Aylor had 20 digs and Timi Severson served four aces.

"I think it was a group collaborative effort - and it wasn't pretty," said Flathead coach Leon Wilcox.

Flathead did wind up winning every statistical category except blocking. The Eagles outplayed the Bravettes 8-3 in that area.

"I thought Big Sky's block was really good. We have not come up against a team that has outblocked us until today. But they made our hitters' jobs tough. They were scrappy and we could not get a block," the coach said.

"Every point was just really a lot of will. The analogy I used with them was that it looked like they were running in quicksand - and they all agreed," he said.

"I felt they played hard. I felt they gave a lot ... but there wasn't much there. I think we had bus lag really bad. We didn't get in until 1:30 this morning and they were all just a little foggy," he said.

"Hannah's hitting really saved our bacon. I had some kids who were dynamite last night that were really off today," he added.

The Bravettes trailed in the first set 23-17. They fought off five set points before Sackett put down a cross court kill and then tipped on the next point for a 30-28 victory.

"I think we just let fatigue get to us," said senior middle hitter Danika Johnson.

"We just started out really tired. We let coming home late last night get to us. We realized that's no excuse and decided to come back.

"We weren't quite as tough as we should have been, but I'm proud we were able to fight back when we needed to. We had a will to win when we got down, so we were able to fight," she said.

The second set was tight, too. Flathead built itself a 20-16 lead, but Big Sky bounced back with six kills over the next eight points to tie the set at 22-all.

Sackett finished that set off, too. First with a kill to put Flathead ahead 24-23, then with a jump serve that resulted in Big Sky hitting wide.

"Sackett's always on," smiled Johnson. "It's good when she's on. She does a lot of good stuff for us," she said.

The third set was more of the same - at least until Johnson was able to get a tip to fall for a 16-15 Bravette lead.

From there, Flathead was able to finally put together a string of points behind the hitting of Sackett and junior Kylie Schlegel.

Schlegel had four kills in seven point to put Flathead up 23-16.

"We never got into a groove until maybe the last eight points of the match. Then we finally started running an offense," Wilcox said.

"Offensively, we started to run some plays. We were covering the floor better at that point. I think it just came down to guts. It was all they had left in them. They decided to just spend it all and get it done," he said.

Kills - Big Sky 33 (Elle Tinkle 10), Flathead 43 (Hannah Sackett 20); Assists - Big Sky 28 (Shannon O'Reilly 18), Flathead 41 (Alison Lunde 22, Emily Russel 19), Blocks - Big Sky 8 (Ellen Wolferman 5), Flathead 3 (Kwyn Johnson 2); Digs - Big Sky 41 (Kristen Daugherty 10, O'Reilly 8), Flathead 57 (Sarah Aylor 20); Aces - Big Sky 8 (Brielle Rolle 3), Flathead 10 (Timi Severson 4).