Danbury edges Margaretta in 5-set SBC classic

LAKESIDE — Danbury had to dig deep. After a hour-plus bus ride to Toledo on Monday to defeat a much bigger Start team, the Lakers found themselves in a battle Tuesday against Margaretta. Danbury watched two match points in the fifth set be erased before Lakers coach Keith Diebler used a timeout. "We told them to play every point hard and don't let the ball hit the floor," Diebler said. "We want to play every point like it's our last. Good things will happen. I truly believe that." After the Polar Bears tied the set, kills from Avrey Bowling and Grace McDonald propelled Danbury to a wild 25-9, 13-25, 26-24, 17-25, 16-14 Sandusky Bay Conference win. "I think we're in tremendous shape," Diebler said. "How do you single somebody out? How do you talk about who did what? It starts with our libero (Lauren Bergman). She's one of the best. I'm just so proud of them because we knew coming in that Margaretta was a good volleyball program and a good team. "Hopefully this puts us up there as somebody to be reckoned with." Danbury (3-0, 1-0 SBC) never trailed in the fifth set. Ahead 5-4, the Lakers got three massive serves from freshman Brynn Blackburn to go up 8-4. The Polar Bears (2-1, 0-1) got within 9-8 following a kill from freshman Adley Berg, but two errors and a kill from Alana Ayers put the Lakers up 12-8. McDonald clobbered a kill up the line to give Danbury match points ahead 14-11. Three straight errors from the Lakers evened the set at 14. Bowling and McDonald responded to give Danbury the big win. "We just don't finish at the net," Margaretta coach Sarah Kuns said. "We hit it, but we're not killing it. Our No. 1 priority this year is to finish at the net instead of the rallies back and forth. We want to make sure our block is sending it down and not getting touches. We want to attack well and get the kill instead of the back-and-forth game." It initially looked like the Lakers were going to run Margaretta off the court. Danbury stormed out to a 6-1 lead and went up 21-8 after a 7-1 run. Kills from McDonald and Quinn DiBucci gave the Lakers the early lead. "They know they're better than that," Kuns said. "We've been doing a lot of digging ourselves out of holes. With it being the first conference game of the season, I don't know if they were expecting something totally different, but we came out and weren't ready. Mentally, we had to start over." Margaretta answered the bell in Set 2. The Polar Bears slowly built a lead before powering away. It was a 12-10 lead when three straight points, capped on an ace from Ella Limberios, gave Margaretta a 15-10 edge. After a serving error by Limberios, the Polar Bears won seven straight points to seize a 22-11 lead. Consecutive aces from Claire Conner evened the match. The third set was 10-10 at one point before Danbury went up 15-11 on a kill from Bowling. The Lakers maintained that margin for most of the set, going up 22-17 on a Margaretta error. Margaretta tied the set at 23 and again at 24, both on kills from Conner. But, it was McDonald who put Danbury up 25-24 and Bowling who put down a kill to give the Lakers a 2-1 lead. "I keep telling the girls that if they build it, people will come," Diebler said. "That's a cliché, but they're exciting to watch. I knew Margaretta would come in and it would be two teams that would fight to the end because their program is solid. It's another team that's up higher than us. This is a big win for us." The Polar Bears responded to force a fifth set. Danbury led 10-9 in Set 4, but Margaretta won points in bunches. The Polar Bears went up 19-15 and made it 21-17 on a kill from Renna Keller. Margaretta won the next four points, as well, evening the match at two sets apiece. Conner finished with 20 digs, 13 kills and nine aces while Mya Feltner added 18 digs and 11 kills for Margaretta. Limberios registered 20 digs, Tarah Hershey added 20 digs and 13 assists and Tessa Lane tallied 18 digs and 12 assists. The Polar Bears find themselves busy in the first week of the season, playing six matches. Margaretta hosts Woodmore on Thursday and hosts Colonel Crawford and Western Reserve in a tri-match Saturday. "We are playing volleyball every other day this year," Kuns said. "It's a lot of Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday volleyball. They have one day in between to work on things and tweak things. We have to go back and work on fundamentals and fix the attacking at the net." The Lakers are back in action Thursday, hosting Northwood. Cali Wunder registered 42 assists for Danbury while Bergman had 39 digs. Bowling finished with 17 kills while McDonald added 14 kills. "We talk about team above self and I think that was demonstrated tonight," Diebler said. "I told them I've never been more proud of a team here at Danbury than what I saw here tonight."