Comet fall in VB tourney final to top-ranked ‘Cats
Charles City’s Bailee Bortz (No. 7) and Tayler Schmidt (No. 1) battle Oelwein’s Amber Rosenstiel at the net during a match in Charles City High School’s old gym as part of Saturday’s volleyball tournament hosted by the Comets.
By John Burbridge sports@charlescitypress.com
CHARLES CITY — You can’t say the Charles City volleyball team is hiding from anyone this season.
In a span of eight days, the Comets faced Class 5A No. 1-ranked Cedar Falls and Class 2A No. 1-ranked Dike-New Hartford at the Tiger Invitational held at Northern Iowa on Sept. 23; traveled to Waverly-Shell Rock the following Thursday to take on the Class 4A No. 3-ranked Go-Hawks; and then on Saturday, the Comets hosted a nine-team invitational that featured several more ranked teams.
“We wanted a tough schedule during the regular season,” Charles City coach Maddie Fank said. “We wanted to compete against the best teams in the state to get us ready for the postseason.”
After going 4-0 in pool play, the Comets faced Class 1A No. 6-ranked Tripoli in the top-four team semifinals.
After losing the first game in a best-of-three match, the Comets rebounded and won the second game. Then in a shortened rubber game up to 15, Charles City jumped out to an early lead and never looked back while winning, 15-11, and advancing to the championship.
That’s where they faced Class 1A No. 1-ranked Janesville.
“We had expected to see them in the final if we managed to get there ourselves,” Fank said.
The Comets took an 11-7 lead in the first game before the Wildcats caught them and went up 13-12 for its first lead of the match.
Charles City couldn’t regain the lead and eventually lost, 21-16.
In the second game there would be no lead for the Comets as Janesville went up 9-2 before extending the advantage to 14-3.
Charles City made a slight run but never really posed a threat as Janesville sealed the straight-game victory by a score of 21-9.
“Our problem is consistency,” said Fank, whose team had defeated South Winneshiek, Wapsie Valley, South Tama and Oelwein in straight games in the pool-play round. “Like today there were two different teams here. We play a great match against Tripoli and then we turn around and play poorly against Janesville.”
While going 5-1 for the day, the Comets improved to 15-9 overall for the season.
The team will host Oelwein on Tuesday, and then after participating in a tournament at Hampton-Dumont on Saturday, the Comets will host Osage the following Monday (Oct. 9) which will be “Organ Donation Night” as both teams will be taking donations and selling #LuftTuff T-shirts.
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