This story is sponsored by: Wisconsin Homes of Marshfield
By Paul Lecker
MarshfieldAreaSports.com
MARSHFIELD – The Marshfield volleyball team celebrated senior Abby Ongna’s 1,000th career kill and rolled to another Wisconsin Valley Conference victory, sweeping Wausau West 3-0 on Thursday night at the Fredrick Construction Fieldhouse at Marshfield High School.
Marshfield won 25-14, 25-14, 25-12, to improve to 6-0 in the WVC this season as the Tigers have yet to lose a set in conference play. Wausau West falls to 3-3.
Grace Taylor served nine-straight points, which included four aces, to take charge of the first set and catapult the Tigers to an 18-8 lead.
Ongna collected the 1,000th kill of her career later in the set and Kailyn Kurth had a tip kill to finish off the 25-14 win for Marshfield.
Ongna has racked up the milestone number in essentially just 2½ years after finishing her freshman year with five kills during the shortened 2020 season in which she largely played in the middle of the front line. Since moving to the outside, she has become one of the more dominating forces in program history.
“It’s really difficult (to get to 1,000 kills). We were just talking about how in basketball you get two points, or three, and you can get that a lot faster, but with this it’s just one,” Marshfield coach Dawn Sadowska said. “It’s something that’s really special.”
Taylor continued her hot serving by starting Game 2 with eight points in a row and Marshfield never trailed. Alyssa Foemmel had a pair of kills in the run for the Tigers.
Ongna and Lauren Homolka had aces, and Sophia Olson finished off the set with a kill as Marshfield won again 25-14.
The third set started the same way as the second, this time with junior Zaida Kolbeck serving seven-straight points following a sideout to put Marshfield up 8-0.
Ongna had five of her eight kills in the final set as the Tigers cruised to the victory.
“I’m extremely happy with our serving,” Sadowska said. “Even against some of the good teams were are going to be seeing this weekend, I think they are going to struggle with our serves. What I’m also really happy about is our serve receive. It hasn’t been a strength for us the last couple of years, but I feel really confident in our serve receive right now. Once in a while the other team will get on a run on their serving, but we usually get it under control.”
Kurth had 24 assists, Foemmel added seven kills, Ashlyn Barwick had 12 digs, and Taylor ended up with seven digs and four aces for Marshfield (22-1 overall).
Marshfield will compete at the Appleton East Invitational on Saturday.