Escaping the Lions’ jaws: Osage outlasts Clear Lake
By Kristi Nixon
OSAGE — A bid to start the road for an eighth straight state berth had a pack of Lions standing in Osage’s way.
Both teams fought tooth and nail with the Green Devils emerging victorious in a five-set marathon in the Class 3A Region 6 quarterfinal on Tuesday, Oct. 17.
Jenna Scharper led the Green Devil attack with 19 kills in the 21-25, 25-20, 25-18, 21-25, 15-9 victory over Clear Lake.
“It’s hard when everyone on each team is really hyped,” Scharper said, “and it’s hard not to get down when you’re behind, but we all pushed through both Clear Lake and Osage, we managed to play together as a team and we pulled through.”
She was one of three Osage players with double-digit kills with sophomore Addison Marcks tallying 15 and setter Taylor Klobassa with 10, the latter recording two big ones in the fifth and deciding set, each time allowing the Green Devils to extend their lead by a few. Klobassa, who has been a hitter in the past, just used reaction rather than using that experience.
“A lot of time you can’t think about it, just do it,” Klobassa said. “A lot of us think too much of it and it doesn’t work out the way we need it. We have to be ready and into the game.”
It was a tense battle the entire match with 39 total lead changes.
“Tonight sure was exciting,” Osage head coach Bryan Tabbert said. “We started out flat that first set and it had me worried, but we have confidence in our girls and we knew we can pick it up after a while. Got past the slow start and talked to the girls about building energy. They kept bringing it. We scrimmaged St. Ansgar and Central Springs last week and during it the girls kept getting after it. ‘We need you to bring that energy to this game right now.’ Kept getting more and more energy and the crowd kept getting more tense as we went to game three, four and five. As the crowd got more intense, we fed off of that.”
With 60 total Green Devil kills, they needed all of them with Clear Lake’s power hitter Xada Johnson unofficially finishing with 30 alone.
“She’s a great player,” Scharper said. “I play with her on club and she’s outstanding. It’s difficult because you don’t know what she is going to do. She’s crazy out there. We tried to figure it out and we pulled through.”
Tabbert added, “We knew Xada was going to be a threat coming in. We played them at the Mason City tournament a couple weeks ago and it was 2-1 there, close sets, so we knew it would be a battle. It was a battle. Xada is an amazing hitter, when she gets up in the front row, even in the back row, she’s got power behind her. She set some of our girls on their butts when they were digging those things. Credit to our girls, they kept it in play and scored some points off it. Clear Lake has some good middles, too, where we had to keep going because if we didn’t respect the quick, they would hit that on us.”
The Green Devils have to turn around and play Class 3A No. 6 New Hampton on Thursday, Oct. 19 on the Chickasaws’ home court.
“New Hampton has some power hitters, similar to tonight,” coach Tabbert said. “We’ll experience something similar to tonight. They are a strong team, we saw them at our home tournament. We played a great set against them, that we dropped, 22-20 was the set score, so the girls know they can hang with New Hampton, they just have to go that next level to just hang with them and beat them.”
Klobassa added, “Tonight helped us a lot, especially with Xada hitting against us. New Hampton has really good hitters, (we’ve) just got to be ready for it.”
A complete story and more photos will be in the Oct. 25 print and e-editions of the Enterprise Journal.
