Shelby volleyball coach Tom Weirich had a message for his team as its faced the tough defense of Hesperia during Thursday night’s Division 3 district final at Mason County Central.
Keep chipping away.
That’s what Shelby did en route to a sweep of West Michigan Conference Rivers Division foe Hesperia, 25-20, 25-18, 25-18. It secure the Tigers their second-straight district championship to go along with the WMC Rivers title they captured recently.
Shelby (32-8-2) advances to Tuesday’s regional semifinal at Holton, where the Tigers will take on Kent City at 5 p.m. Kent City swept White Cloud Thursday for a district title.
“It was a great night to be a Tiger. We saw a little bit of everything in tonight’s matchup against Hesperia. Nothing was more impressive than the Hesperia defense,” Weirich said.
“Navea Gauthier put up 29 kills, but Hesperia did not back down from one of her swings. My message to the team was to just keep swinging. Eventually, we figured they would hit the floor, but it took 111 of those swings to make it happen — 77 of them off the arm of Navea.”
Shelby hit .234 as a team and served at 88 percent. Weirich said he would have liked to see those numbers a little higher, but against the suffocating defense of Hesperia, he said the Tigers were happy to walk out with the win.
Shelby’s Morgan Weirich finished with 25 digs, 13 service points (two aces) and five assists. Audrey Horton recorded 30 assists for the Tigers, while Claire Gowell had 19 service points (four aces) and three kills. Biloxi Lee finished with 22 digs.
No stats were submitted for Hesperia.
“Back-to-back district titles has a nice ring to it. It was on our short list of goals for the season. A conference title was a big moment for us and the next focus was to get back to a regioanl and give ourselves a chance to make it deeper into the tournament than we did last season,” said Tom Weirich, whose squad last year lost to Grand Rapids NorthPointe Christian in the regional semifinals.
“Proud of the team. This title certainly was not handed to us. They had to earn everything they took out of this week. Going into the week, we knew we were going to see the best that every team had to offer. The crowd got to see some great volleyball and we were fortunate to come out on top.”
