John Bohnenkamp for Pen City Current Sports
CORALVILLE — Adalyn Kruse turned into a traffic cop.
Holy Trinity was closing in on finally finishing off Wapsie Valley in Tuesday’s Class 1A state tournament quarterfinal, and Kruse, a senior who had taken over the match, started positioning her teammates.
Serve receive, set, Kruse kill.
And the Crusaders were still alive to play another day.
Holy Trinity shook off opening-set jitters, then rallied after a third-set loss to take a 12-25, 25-22, 23-25, 25-18 25-12 win.
The Crusaders (31-6), the fifth seed in the tournament, will play top seed Ankeny Christian (39-2) in Wednesday’s 6 p.m. semifinal at Xtream Arena.
“As a team, we were good tonight,” Holy Trinity coach Melissa Freesmeier said. “It took us a while.”
Better late…
“That was not Holy Trinity volleyball in the first game,” junior hitter Olivia Bendlage said. “After that first set, I was like, oh, I really hope we pick this up. And we did.”
“We’re a young team, very nervous in that first game,” Kruse said. “Just getting together and playing as one after that first set really kicked us off into pulling that out and making it to tomorrow.”
At times the Crusaders, who play four freshmen, looked young, but it was the players who have been in the swirling chaos of the state tournament who helped finish the win. Kruse was a force, finishing with 19 kills, all but two coming in the final four sets. Bendlage had 16 kills. Senior Elizabeth Griffin had 45 assists.
“I thought our veterans took over,” Freesmeier said. “Adalyn and Lizzo, Olivia, they just took over and brought the freshmen along with them.”
The first set was dominated by the Warriors, especially hitter Sawyer Buhr, who finished the match with 22 kills.
“We were just not playing our game,” said freshman libero Brynn Denning, who had 37 digs. “I feel like they weren’t doing anything special. We just weren’t being disciplined.”
Wapsie Valley was on the verge of winning the second set, up 22-20, before the Crusaders scored the last six points, three on Kruse kills, including one on set point.
Everything was even, and this was going to be a long night.
Even after the Warriors won the third set, the Crusaders were not daunted. The fourth set was tied at 15 before Holy Trinity went on a 5-0 run to take control. Up 21-18, the Crusaders closed out the set with four consecutive points, two on kills from Bendlage.
Holy Trinity raced to a 10-2 lead in the final set before Wapsie Valley scored the next four points. That’s when Kruse began directing traffic.
“Adalyn’s like, ‘Hey, go here, give me the ball,’” Freesmeier said. “Boom, she took that kill, and it was like, ‘OK, here we go.’”
“We just had to mix things up,” Kruse said. “They knew what we were doing. We did it the whole entire game. So getting over and mixing it up, and them not knowing who was hitting, created havoc on the other side.”
The comeback, Bendlage said, sent a message.
“It definitely says, ‘Don’t count us out,’” Bendlage said. “We can come back and do anything. And I mean, that’s something we’ve been talking about all year. We’ve tended to start out slow, but I feel like tonight, after playing the first time here, hopefully we can come out stronger and play Holy Trinity volleyball.”
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