Photo by Jake Przytarski Wabasso’s Alison Fenger goes up for a kill during their match against Cedar Mountain on Thursday. The Rabbits defeated the Cougars 3-0.

WABASSO – A dominant display behind the service line by the Wabasso volleyball team featuring 17 aces helped fuel the Rabbits to their first win of the season on Thursday over the visiting Cedar Mountain Cougars in a Tomahawk Conference clash.

Coach Barb Johnson credits their strong serving performance as a major factor in getting the team refocused after falling behind 6-0 in the first set.

“We did a really good job with serving and that got us back on track,” said Johnson. “We work a lot on our serving in practice. We just did a good job of pushing it to those corners and making them have to play every ball and focus themselves.”

The victory served as a major confidence booster for her team following a lopsided loss at the hands of Minneota a week earlier, added Johnson.

“That was a big win for us being the start of the conference season and we’ve been really looking forward to getting into conference play and seeing where we stand as far as that goes,” said Johnson. “I think it was really good to just get a little bit of confidence. We haven’t played since we played Minneota last week so we really needed to get that confidence.”

Following a six-point run by the Cougars to open up the match, the Rabbits battled back to tie the score at 10 apiece thanks to a 10-4 run highlighted by three consecutive aces by Kelsey Frank. Wabasso would take its first lead of the set moments later when Cora Eichten added two aces to make it 13-11. With momentum shifted to their favor, the Rabbits continued to pour it on and went on a 12-7 run to take the set 25-18.

Feeding off of their comeback win in the opening set, the Rabbits came out of the gates red-hot to begin the second set by jumping out to a decisive 19-10 lead. Undeterred, the Cougars dug deep and went on a 9-1 run to even the score at 20.

The Rabbits were able to settle in and take it to match point with a 24-21 lead before Cedar Mountain went on a 3-0 run to tie it up once more. The comeback attempt by the Cougars would fall short in the end, however, as Wabasso took the next two points to win 26-24.

After a pair of tightly-contested sets, the third and final set was never in doubt for Wabasso as they once again jumped out to a sizable lead at 17-9, but this time shut the door on a Cedar Mountain comeback attempt by outscoring the Cougars 8-4 the rest of the way en route to a straight sets match victory.

The Rabbits will be back in action this weekend for the Montevideo Invite where they will open up competition against Paynseville on Saturday at 9 a.m. before taking on Ashby and Montevideo later in the day.

KILLS: Wabasso (Eichten 12, Huhnerkoch 4, Frank 4, Fenger 4)

SERVING (Aces): Wabasso (Eichten 5, Frank 5)

DIGS: Wabasso (Brand 9, Eichten 6, Carlson 6)

SET ASSISTS: Wabasso (Frank 13, Carlson 11)

BLOCKS: Wabasso (Salfer 1, Frank 1)