RIDGWAY — Otto-Eldred was perhaps the best volleyball team in District 9 in 2017, and the Lady Terrors proved it by winning the D-9 Class A crown as well as a game in the state tournament.
This year, it’s been the Ridgway Lady Elkers who have looked like the class of the district en route to a one-loss regular season and earning the top seed in the 2018 Class A tourney.
So Tuesday night served as a passing of the torch of sorts, as Ridgway (18-1) handled the Lady Terrors (13-8) in straight sets for a 27-25, 25-8, 25-21 victory that sent the Elkers to the Class A semifinals.
“I went up last week and watched them play and that helped us out a lot tonight,” Ridgway coach Josh Burrs said. “They’re a great team; we knew coming in tonight they were going to battle hard and they did. We haven’t played in a week, so we might’ve been a little slow in that first game, and they battled hard, and they fought with us. They’ve got some great serving, some great hitters.”
The Elkers certainly did look a bit rusty to start the match, as O-E opened the first set with a 6-2 lead. But the Ridgway players found their footing to eventually knot things up at 7-7.
The rest of the game would continue to be extremely close with both teams earning several well-played points. Neither team was able to hold a lead for very long, and the score continued to go back and forth until the very end of the set.
In the final few points, both sides fought off potential game-winning points until Ridgway finally broke through to win 27-25.
“That first set, I really thought we could take ‘em,” O-E coach Jame Thomas said. “But they battled hard and came back, and it came down to just a few more mistakes on our side.”
The second set proved to not be nearly as dramatic as the first, as Ridgway came out the much stronger side, winning nine of the first 12 points and never looking back.
After going more than a week without seeing any real live action, it seemed that Ridgway just needed a little while to get back into the swing of things.
“We finally got some playing in,” Burrs said. “You practice all week, but practice ain’t a game. We got that first game in and we finally got some real game action, got some swings, and we were able to get things going the way that we expect to play.”
Ridgway’s precision and aggressiveness forced the Lady Terrors into a number of mistakes in the second set.
“The second set we had way too many mistakes,” Thomas said.
It looked like the third set might hold more of the same for both teams, as the Elkers raced out to a 6-1 advantage. But to O-E’s credit, Thomas’ players never gave up; the Terrors began to claw their way back, winning a few points at a time to cut into Ridgway’s lead.
Otto got a big boost after it won by far the longest point of the match to cut the deficit to 14-9.
Eventually O-E got within three points — both 23-20 and 24-21 — but Ridgway wasn’t going to be denied.
Burrs credited the depth of his squad and the team-first attitude for the Elkers’ success on Tuesday and all season long.
“It’s a team thing,” he said. “They all play well together. Anytime I call someone’s number, they’re ready to go and they all know how to perform and do their job the correct way.”
Harlee VanScoter led the Lady Terrors with 10 kills, nine blocks, and 16 digs, while Haley Cousins added seven kills and 11 digs.
Thomas, meanwhile, couldn’t help but be proud of his team even in a losing effort.
“They played with a lot of heart,” he said. “I’m proud of the girls; they had so much heart going in and trying to dig back into that game.”
The loss puts an end to an especially trying season for Thomas, who took a short hiatus earlier in the season after his wife Inge, a former O-E volleyball player herself, passed away.
But through it all, the one constant was the effort and passion of his players.
“It wasn’t just tonight; it was the whole season,” he said. ‘I don’t know how many matches we had that went five sets and they never got their heads down and just kept battling.”
Ridgway will continue its quest for a district title on Thursday when it plays host to Cranberry — who defeated Johnsonburg on Tuesday — in the Class A semifinals.
“The attitude has to be that we want to win,” Burrs said about the road ahead for Ridgway. “No matter what the score is, we can’t ever get down. We’ve just got to be ready to play. We’ve got to know where we want to be and we’ve just got to fight to get there. Otto-Eldred made that nice playoff run last year; we hope to do something like that this year.”
