Mogadore volleyball thrives on heart and grit

MOGADORE — The Wildcats don't have the traditional 5-10 to 6-0 go-to hitter that so many high school volleyball teams rely on.

What they have instead is a winning combination of heart and grit.

That was on full display Tuesday when Mogadore rallied from two sets down to top Rootstown 7-25, 23-25, 25-17, 25-20, 15-7 on Senior Night.

"It was heart," Wildcats coach Andrea Ball said. "Those last three games were all heart. We don't have the biggest line, we don't have the most seasoned hitters and our back row is scrappy as heck, and they just picked the night to have the game of their lives."

That victory seemed impossible during a first set in which the Rovers' array of powerful hitters rained down spikes on the Wildcats, while the home team couldn't muster much of an attack at all.

Somehow, Mogadore turned the tables, starting on the defensive end where a back row led by junior Brooklyn McIntyre increasingly began to extend points.

"It's really our energy," said Zoey Ruppel, one of two Wildcats seniors honored Tuesday. "We just came out and gave it all we got because we knew what we could do and we wanted to show everybody. Everybody doubted us after that first game and we came in and we showed them all that we had."

As the match went on, a Wildcats offense without one dominant hitter used an "it takes a village" approach, as Sophia Moledor and later Addi Gerring and Kenzington Miller turned increasingly confident swings into kills.

"This is why I love this team because we can all work together," Ruppel said. "We all get along and we all have our own roles."

That combination of scrappy defense and a growing offense is about more than one night. It's the story of these 2022 Wildcats, who now boast a winning record both overall (7-6) and in the Portage Trail Conference (3-2).

While Mogadore is short on height, Hennessy Brake, Addi Gerring, Kenzington Miller, Sophia Moledor show promise as hitters

The last Wildcats team to top the Rovers, back in 2019, looked very different.

That Mogadore team did have that traditional dominant hitter that tends to lead most high school volleyball teams.

In fact, the Wildcats' leading hitter that season, Maddie Butler, was arguably the most dominant hitter in the league that year, and went on to play Division I volleyball for Cleveland State.

This Mogadore team knows it doesn't have a Maddie Butler so it has to win in a different way.

Or as Wildcats senior Ashlyn Peteroff put it:

"Just we work with what we've got."

It turned out they had plenty Tuesday.

If they didn't have one dominant hitter raining down spikes, they had myriad sources of offense. That included Haylie Stuart and McIntyre wreaking havoc from the service line. And Moledor sending spikes off the block at the net.

"We are definitely a team playing," Ball said. "We are not a one-man team. A 15-man team is what we are."

As Tuesday's match went on, Hennessy Brake had a couple of her best hits of the season, including back-to-back kills with the Wildcats hanging onto a 20-18 lead in the fourth set.

"This is Sophie's game of the season," Ball said. "Hennessy Brake, she was hitting the heck out of the ball. We just finally started hitting."

And then Gerring and Miller began to take over.

Indeed, it was Miller who got the Wildcats' raucous student section going in the fifth set with a leadoff ace. With Mogadore holding onto a slim 7-5 lead, Miller ended a marathon point with an aggressive spike through the left side for the kill. Then, Gerring followed with an ace to push the Wildcats lead to four (9-5), later adding another ace.

"We are very short and people are not intimidated by us, but when we come out, we show them what we have," Ruppel said. "We still manage to get the ball over and get good, hard hits down and our back row is always a factor."

Mogadore relies on defense, Brooklyn McIntyre

If the offense came alive late Tuesday, these Wildcats will always start with heart and grit.

And what better test of heart could there be than Tuesday's first set?

Volleyball is the ultimate game of momentum and it's not unusual to see teams rally from a set or two down, but Tuesday felt different, given just how thoroughly the Rovers dominated the opening stanza.

"We just tell each other that's not how we play," Peterhoff said of Mogadore's discussion between sets. "We know how we play, and we're a team, we do it together and we just come together in the end."

The Wildcats' biggest asset is their passion and their frenetic effort on the defensive end, personified by a player like McIntyre, who wears her emotions on her sleeves and is a ball of energy on the court. So perhaps it's no surprise that a team like Mogadore would rise to its highest level with a packed student section cheering it on.

"It just brings all this energy to us and we all get pumped up," Ruppel said. "We're all in it. We all go for everything. Everything just gets better, like we all come together as a team and it just feels amazing. It's like the best thing ever."

This article originally appeared on Record-Courier: Mogadore volleyball thrives on heart and grit