East strong at invite

West Bend Daily News: Sept. 3, 2013

By NICHOLAS DETTMANN
Daily News Sports Editor

MEQUON — If this is West Bend East's baseline, the 2013 season may be special.
With all sorts of expectations on the Suns this volleyball season, they met those expectations in their first action of the season Friday and Saturday in The Joust at Homestead High School.
The Suns reached the Final Four of the tournament, losing to Menomonee Falls in two games in the best-of-three games tournament format.
East Troy defeated Menomonee Falls to claim the championship after the Trojans beat Neenah in the semifinal round.
"I'm so pleased with the way we played," East coach Colleen Hasse said. "We've got some goals set for the season about what we want to accomplish and I thought the girls did a good job coming in and playing some very even-level volleyball for the whole weekend."
Kettle Moraine Lutheran won the White Bracket for 17th place, while Germantown reached the Bronze Bracket championship match for ninth place. No result was available.
“I thought we did OK for the youth on our team,” KML coach Rachel Kuehl said. “We tried a lot of different personnel and offenses.”
East Troy is a favorite to win the Division 2 state championship as the Trojans return five players who were All-State last season, while Menomonee Falls and Neenah were state qualifiers. East lost to Neenah in last year's sectional final.
No third-place match was played. If there was, it would've pitted Neenah against East. Both are scheduled to compete in The Sprawl (Sept. 27-28) and the Neenah Invitational (Oct. 5). They're also in the same sectional at the end of October.
"I think playing Neenah right now would be too early," Hasse said. "I think (Neenah's) not ready and I don't think I'm ready either."
To get to the semifinal, the Suns went 3-0 in pool play, defeating Muskego, Brookfield Central and Kimberly. On Saturday, East defeated Germantown and DSHA, the Division 1 state runner-up last season, to advance to the gold bracket, assuring them no worse than a top-four finish.
"They came in ready to play good volleyball," Hasse said.
Against DSHA, the Dashers led Game 1 22-21. A kill by Megan Kiefert started a 4-0 run to win the game. In Game 2, it was East, jumping out to a 3-0 lead and never trailed in the game to sweep DSHA.
DSHA and Muskego were ranked higher than East in the preseason polls.
The Joust and the Lynn LaPorte Sprawl later this month in West Bend are considered the two elite high school girls volleyball tournaments in the state.
"I needed to see where we were and I was able to see where our strengths were and I was unable to see where our weakness are," Hasse said.
In the match against Menomonee Falls, East struggled against Penn State-bound Simone Lee. The hitter had little trouble finding the spaces in East's defense, finishing with 13 kills.
"We got into a situation that we kind of forgot how to play like we had the whole weekend," Hasse said.
Against Falls, Natalie Geidel led the Suns in kills with seven. Sophomore Lexie Uselding had six. Delaney McCreary led the Suns in assists with 19, while Baylee Gross had a team-high nine digs.
Geidel led the Suns in the weekend with 35 kills, an average of 5.8 per match (six matches). She also had 11 blocks.
Hasse was pleased with all of her players' contributions throughout the weekend. McCreary had 135 assists (22.5 per match) and Gross had 56 digs (9.3 per match). Uselding had 43 kills for the tournament and Kiefert had 30.
The Suns have a Wisconsin Little Ten Conference triple dual Thursday against West Bend West, Wisconsin Lutheran and Beaver Dam at Beaver Dam.
"We look at this as our baseline," Hasse said.
"It's a good baseline," she added. "You look at Menomonee Falls, Neenah and East Troy, all very good teams, and to be able to stick with them and beat a couple very good teams to get into there is a great confidence booster for these kids."