By Drew Terhall

Dailyadvocate.com

FAIRBORN — The Lady Wave volleyball ended their season one game short of a District Championship game. The fifth seed Greenville team lost to the one seed Tippecanoe at Fairborn High School in the OHSAA Division III Volleyball Southwest District semifinal game, 3-0.

Coach Jim Hardesty said the team gave it their all against a great Tippecanoe team that only lost a total of three sets all season long, all three were to Versailles to end the season. The Lady Wave made too many passing and hitting errors to keep up with the Lady Red Devils.

“It’s a game of who can make the less amount of errors. We just didn’t do that tonight,” Hardesty said. “But, super proud of these girls. They put in a big effort.”

Greenville started each set with energy and were keeping up with Tippecanoe. But as the set went on, the Lady Red Devils took over in different ways.

In the first set, Tippecanoe had the advantage in serving. A pair of serving aces forced a Greenville timeout when they were down 16-8. The Lady Wave couldn’t come back in the set and lost 25-11.

In the second set, Greenville hung around to start with only being down 9-7. From that point, the hitting from Tippecanoe started to get hot. Hardesty said they knew Tippecanoe had strong hitters on both sides of the net. The blockers had a difficult time getting to their spots to disrupt the hitters.

“We knew they were going to push the ball outside on both sides. Our middle was going to have to go both ways. We didn’t do a great job of putting the blocks on the outside. When they were hitting the ball, it was a free swing,” Hardesty said.

With Greenville not being able to sustain any momentum, Tippecanoe won the second set 25-16.

In the third set, the Lady Wave came out strong once again. But they couldn’t hold off Tippecanoe for long as the Lady Red Devils took care of their business and won the third set 25-14.

Greenville ends their season with a 14-10 record and a 12-6 MVL record. Five of their losses came against Tippecanoe and Butler, the top two teams in the MVL.

Hardesty said it was a slow start to the season due to injuries and not having their full roster available to start. After the Greenville Federal Invite, they reeled off five straight wins to get their season back on track.

Players like seniors Brooke Schmidt and Shyanne Gibboney and junior Kindyl Peltz continued to lead the team and get their names in the Greenville record books. Hardesty said those players have been awarded honors in their conference and also in their district.

The senior class with Gibboney, Schmidt, Laci Shepard and Olivia Flatter all leave Greenville as one of the most successful senior classes in the program.

“They probably won more games than anybody else in Greenville history, I’m assuming. I know since we’ve been here, they’ve won more games than anybody else,” Hardesty said.

Hardesty said they have a good nucleus coming back and will have about four starters returning.

Contact Daily Advocate sports editor Drew Terhall at [email protected].