Twice the Berkshire Badgers boys’ volleyball team had forced a decisive fifth set this season and twice had they had fallen short. Losing a pair of five-set matches was two times too many for Berkshire and it finally prevailed in a five-set match by beating Villa Angela-St. Joseph 23-25, 25-22, 13-25, 25-15, 15-3 last Thursday evening in Cleveland.
“It seems like we are getting better at when we mistakes, we recover from that and push ahead when we need to and on Thursday night, am still a little bit excited about it,” said Coach Tim Percic. “It was not just the win that was important for our record but we got over the hump.”
After tying the match at 1-1 by winning the second set by a 25-22 margin, the Vikings dominated Berkshire (4-4) in the third set with some dominant serving. The second-year coach acknowledged that the Badgers’ backs were against the wall.
Percic said through the first three sets, his squad struggled to develop any sort of offense. Unlike last year, Berkshire is not a dynamic hitting team and has relied more on its defense and serving to stay in contention.
The Badgers responded by winning the fourth set 25-15 to force a fifth one and according to Percic, junior outside hitter Jake Starr told his team they were not going to into the fifth set just to compete but were going to dictate the play and finally win their first five-set match of the season.
The junior outside hitter delivered on his promise, recording six consecutive aces at the beginning of the set to push Berkshire to a 7-1 advantage.
“Jake’s work from the service line is really incredible,” the fourth-year coach noted. “If he can rattle off three or five serves in a row, it motivates the team and it gets people going. He has a very unorthodox jump serve that he has had since he was a freshmen. I told him if it isn’t broke don’t fix it so just do what is natural so it is hard to describe it.”
After the Vikings finally broke Starr’s service game, it was junior libero Trent Hornak’s turn to dominate.
Up until the fifth set, Percic said Hornak had struggled with serves and had committed three errors. Hornak erased his previous mistakes in the match and recorded six consecutive aces, propelling Berkshire to clinch its first five-set match of the season and third victory in the last four matches.
Hornak and Starr combined to score 12 aces in the final set and 26 in the entire match.
“Someobdy asked me afterward ‘What did you say to them or what did you do?’. I said they drank the Kool-aid before we got there,” Percic said. “They were ready to go and I did not have to say anything in the huddle and they knew what they had to do. This was the third match where it went to five and after two of them slipped through their fingers, they said not today and pulled together as a team and impressed me.”
After a slow start to the season, when the Badgers lost three of their first four matches, they have turned things around. Percic said their defining moment came when they were swept by Warren Howland at a tournament at Akron Firestone High School on March 23.
Percic added that the loss forced his players to re-evaluate where they were at and used that defeat as motivation to come together as a team.
Even after the Badgers’ brief two-game winning streak ended with a five-set loss against Geauga County rival Chardon on April 2, they bounced back with a thrilling victory against one of the top boys’ volleyball teams in the area.
Percic acknowledged that it was an all-too familiar feeling for Berkshire when the Vikings took a 2-1 lead after winning the third set.
“They had a server that was jump-serving that our team was stumped by,” Percic said. “He rattled off his own share of aces or at least serves that kept us out of system and our guys got down on themselves because they were not putting together real rallies.”
Staring at a 2-1 deficit, Berkshire rallied in the fourth set and the dominant serving by Starr and Hornak in the fifth set fueled a stunning upset against Villa Angela-St. Joseph on its home court.
Following road contests against Perry on Wednesday evening and Geauga County foe Notre Dame-Cathedral Latin on Thursday night, Berkshire will return home and face Shaker Heights in Burton on Saturday morning at 11 a.m.
