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Smithies put an end to Crestview run

Crestview’s volleyball team celebrates a point against Smithville on Thursday in a Div. III regional semifinal at Barberton High School. (Photo by Gary Leininger)

BARBERTON — Despite entering 2020 short on varsity experience, the Crestview volleyball team nonetheless came together as the season wore on and put together another memorable campaign.

Unfortunately for the Rebels, the ride came to an end Thursday night as a deep, experienced Smithville squad dispatched Crestview 25-17, 25-13, 25-22 in a Division III regional semifinal at Barberton High School.

“When we set out goals at the beginning of the season, I’m not sure how many people were expecting to end up here,” Crestview senior Molly Emch said. “I think we thought it would be more of a rebuilding year. I’m so proud of how far we came and how much we improved as the year went on. I’m sad to see it end.”

Tenth-ranked Smithville improves to 24-1 and will face off against third-ranked Independence for the regional title at 2 p.m. Saturday at Barberton High School.

Fifteenth-ranked Crestview closes the season at 24-3. After losing eight seniors off of last season’s regional semifinalist, the Rebels stormed their way to another conference title and a second straight district championship. Coach Alisha Auer said her team had nothing to feel ashamed about as they filed out of the gym Thursday.

“I knew we had the potential to be this good at the beginning of the season,” Auer said. “But the matter of getting here was just kind of a distant thought. To have this much success this season was pretty awesome considering the majority of my team never stepped on a varsity court before. That’s pretty cool.”

Smithville coach Susie Brookover noted that her team was notorious for slow starts this season, but that was certainly not the case Thursday. The Smithies took early control of the first game and gradually pulled away for a 25-17 victory to set the tone.

“We’ve been stressing that we have to attack right away,” Brookover said. “You’re at the point in the season where you can’t afford to sit back and see what someone else has, you just have to come out and set the tone from the beginning.”

The second game was more of the same, as Smithville ripped off the first eight points and weren’t seriously challenged, putting the Rebels’ backs up against the wall.

“We were very hesitant at first,” Crestview coach Alisha Auer said. “We didn’t play our game like we needed to off the bat. It’s hard to recover from a slow start when you’re playing a good team like Smithville.”

“A big part of it was nerves, I think,” Emch said. “For whatever reason, it just took us a while to settle into our groove tonight.”

The Rebels regrouped, however, and the third game was easily the most intense stretch of the night. The lead changed hands 11 times and neither team was able to open up more than four points of separation. After Crestview nudged in front 21-20 on a Grace Auer kill, the Smithies reeled off five of the next six points to claim their spot in Saturday’s regional final.

“We started in a different spot to change some matchups in the third set,” Auer said. “It worked, but didn’t work well enough to finish unfortunately.”

Grace Auer capped off her superb freshman season with eight kills, 10 assists and nine digs for the Rebels, while Shelby Rambo had seven kills and six blocks. Lucy Montgomery added five kills and 12 assists. Emch closed out her final match with five kills.

Brooke Karlen and Brooke Fatzinger made life tough for Crestview with 20 and 16 kills respectively. Smithville setter Ashlyn Brookover had a busy night with 43 assists.

The Smithies, who were district runners-up the last two seasons, came into the game with three four-year starters and two three-year starters. Their experience showed.

“We have a lot of players who were thrown into the fire as freshmen and went through some serious growing pains,” Brookover said. “But now they’ve been through plenty of battles and you can see that paying off.”

Through all of the adjustments and uncertainties that this season had brought, Auer couldn’t praise her team enough for keeping a positive mindset.

“We had a lot of fun this season, these girls love to play and it was a great group to be around Auer said. I gave them off more time this year than normal just because of all the crazy stuff going on, but they almost looked disappointed whenever I gave them a day off. They were always so excited to get in the gym and play.”

Match notes

• Thursday marked Crestview’s 10th trip to regionals in program history and third appearance in the last five years.

• The Rebels came into Thursday riding a 20-match winning streak. They have gone 38-4 over the last two seasons.

• Crestview shows no signs of slowing down, with five of Thursday’s six starters all coming back next season.

• Defending state-runner up Independence rolled past Kirtland 25-16, 25-20, 25-11 in the first match of the night.

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