Michigan Tech middle blocker Paige Wagner (4) and outside hitter Brooke Dzwik (6) attempt a block during a match against Grand Valley State Saturday at the SDC Gym in Houghton. (David Archambeau/For the Gazette)

HOUGHTON — After extending their season-long winless streak to six with a 3-1 loss to Wayne State on Friday, the Michigan Tech Huskies volleyball team battled hard Saturday, and that hard work paid off in a five-set victory over the Grand Valley State Lakers.

With the split, the Huskies moved to 8-12 overall and 5-4 in GLIAC play, which keeps them in sixth in the conference standings with a chance to catch fifth-place Northern Michigan Tuesday.

Huskies need tiebreaker to defeat Lakers

After dropping the first and fourth sets, the Huskies and the Lakers needed a fifth set. In the tiebreaker, the Huskies emerged victorious, earning a five-set win, 19-25, 25-17, 25-20, 15-25, and 15-9.

The Huskies led 12-5 after a junior defensive specialist Amelia Albers ace in the fifth set, but the Lakers weren’t going down without a fight. They fought back to 12-9, and Huskies coach Cindy Pindral called a timeout

The rest was needed to give the Huskies a chance to regroup.

“Sometimes it’s easy to get ahead of yourself,” said Huskies coach Cindy Pindral. “When you look up at the scoreboard, and you see a big spread, you’re like, ‘Oh, we can kind of let off the gas a little bit.’ Absolutely not. It was actually our libero Julia (Fledderjohn), who said, ‘You know, don’t look at the score at all, just focus on our quality of play, and chip away one after another after another.'”

Coming out of that break, senior outside hitter Brooke Dzwik picked up her seventh kill of the match to put the Huskies within two points. The Huskies also picked up the next two points, first on a sophomore middle blocker Paige Wagner block, and then on a Wagner kill, to seal the win.

“I just always look to my teammates,” said Wagner. “I had a few errors there in the beginning of the first, and just looking in their eyes, especially my teammate Julia has been amazing for me, but just looking her in the eyes, and knowing these people believe in me, I can believe in myself. I’m doing this for them. So, to do that for them meant the world to me.”

Wagner finished her night with 11 kills, one solo block and seven block assists.

“Paige is such a spark plug,” said Pindral. “She is an excellent all-around volleyball player. She’s just an excellent all-around volleyball player. She is so clutch. She comes up in huge moments with big plays, but also makes all the little plays look easy. So, it’s a good balance of both of those things. Paige is such an asset to our team.”

The win was necessary for the Huskies, who had dropped six straight. With the win, the team can breathe a little easier.

“It was huge for us,” Wagner said. “We’ve known that we have the pieces there, and every day in practice we come out and we know how talented we are. But, to really see us come together is just amazing and so important; just to use this as a launch pad for the rest of our season. I mean, we had girls cheering up in the huddle, because we knew we could get there, and we finally did.”

Michigan Tech came out flat in the first set, falling behind 5-0 before they even really seemed to engage. The Lakers racked up three aces in that stretch. In the entirety of the first set, the Huskies committed seven serve-receive errors, which kept them from being able to catch Grand Valley.

In the second set, the Huskies opened with one of junior right side hitter Rachel Zurek’s match-high 14 kills, and they battled through a tough first 10 points, finding themselves tied 5-5. However, a Albers ace later, they led 7-5, and then Wagner came up with a block before Albers racked up another ace, and suddenly the Huskies were in the driver’s seat at 9-5. They never let the Lakers back into the set.

The Huskies jumped out to a 5-2 lead in the third set before a senior libero Julia Fledderjohn ace made it a four-point lead. From there, the Huskies continued to keep the Lakers at arm’s length, and that worked to their advantage until the late stages when Grand Valley pulled back within three, 21-18. However, Zurek kill and a freshman right side hitter Madelyn Torola kill put the set out of reach.

Torola finished with nine kills.

In the fourth set, the Lakers jumped ahead 17-11, and despite a pair of kills late from Wagner, the Huskies could not really catch up, setting up the tiebreaker set.

The Huskies started the tiebreaker strong. By the time Fledderjohn picked up an ace, the Huskies led 10-3. Shortly after, a kill by Dzwik and an ace from Albers put the Huskies ahead 12-5.

Huskies fall to Warriors in four sets

The Huskies volleyball team started slowly Friday night in the first, second, and fourth sets and it cost them all three times in a four-set loss to the Wayne State Warriors. The Warriors won the match 25-14, 25-20, 16-25, and 25-16.

“(We) had a really slow start,” said Pindral, “really slow start. But, we made a sub early on, and I thought Brooke (Dzwik) did well in the opportunity that she was given. We started to fight, started to execute in set two and started to build some momentum on our defense.

“That carried over into set three, and we blew them out in set three. We were finally playing the game that we’ve been practicing, feeling good about ourselves, and doing all the right things. Then we had trouble sustaining it into set four. Our serving got a little bit weaker in set four, and Wayne was in system more, meaning that they were able to set their middles, who are deadly.”

The Huskies were paced by Zurek, who had 12 kills, and Dzwik, who was the only other Huskies hitter in double figures at 10.

Wayne State opened on a 7-0 run to start the first set before Torola got the Huskies on the board with a kill, one of her nine for the match.

From there, however, the Huskies never really got going, falling behind by as many as 11 at 16-5.

In the second second, junior middle blocker Tricia Kennedy got the Huskies on the board first at 1-0 with one of her nine kills in the match. However, from there, the Warriors jumped out to a 5-1 lead.

The Huskies fought their way back, getting to even at 13-13 after a Dzwik kill, but they could not stay there, as the Warriors continued to battle back and open up multiple-point leads. The Huskies stuck with them, but could not ultimately catch them.

In the third set, the Huskies finally broke through at 5-4 after Wagner picked up a kill. From there, the Huskies kept the pressure on, led by kills from Zurek, Kreider, and Kennedy to move ahead 12-8.

Michigan Tech kept putting pressure on, and never led by less than four the rest of the set, which ended on a Kreider ace.

All the momentum the Huskies built dissipated in the fourth set as the Warriors again jumped out to a 5-0 lead, and then led shortly after 8-2. Torola picked up her second straight kill to pull the Huskies within five at 8-3, but shortly after the Warriors opened a 16-6 lead after a service error.

From there, the Huskies were chasing the remainder of the match.

Pindral lamented her team’s struggles with serve-receive.

“We weren’t executing our game plan, we weren’t serving tough,” she said. “Our blocking was all over the place when we had a very set blocking scheme, and we weren’t executing at all. So, their attackers were scoring at will.

“Then our serve-receive was horrible in set one. You can just look at the stats. We had 15 reception errors on the match, which is four and a half a set. We averaged less than two a set. So, one probably our worst serve-receive in terms of errors. But, when we were passing, when we were actually making contact with the ball, it was good.”

Kreider finished with one kill, 41 assists, and two aces on the evening. She also added 13 digs.

“Our freshmen and our sophomores are leading the charge right now, which is great for them, and great for our future,” Pindral said. “But, at the same time, we’re trying to do things right now and our leadership are our youngest players.”

Up next

The Huskies have a three-match week coming up, starting with Northern Michigan Tuesday, in Marquette. Opening serve is set for 6 p.m.