BATTLE CREEK — Revenge, a dish best served.
That’s it. No hot or cold. Just served.
Harper Nausadis served up a pair of fifth-set aces to close out No. 6-ranked Traverse City St. Francis’ 26-24, 24-26, 21-25, 25-19, 15-7 victory over No. 3 Kalamazoo Christian in Friday’s Division 3 volleyball semifinal at Kellogg Arena in Battle Creek. The win avenges the Gladiators’ loss to the Comets in last year’s state championship match and puts St. Francis back in the final for a second consecutive year.
“I was just so relieved to have won that game,” Nausadis said. “I didn’t really think about the fact that it was an ace. I was just glad it was over. It feels so good to get our revenge.”
Kalamazoo Christian knocked off TCSF 26-24, 16-25, 25-23, 25-20 in last year’s final to win the Comets’ first state championship.
“We were ready for that rematch,” St. Francis head coach Kathleen Nance said. “We wanted it. It was kind of a blessing for us that they were on our side of the bracket. It was something that we had looked forward to, to get a rematch.”
The Gladiators (35-12-3) now get a shot at 2:30 p.m. Saturday at No. 1-ranked Monroe St. Mary Catholic Central, which won the only other time St. Francis made the state finals in 2012.
Monroe St. Mary and Miss Volleyball finalists Jessica Costlow (Toledo commit) and McKenna Payne (Utah) defeated No. 5 Cass City and Texas Tech commit and Miss Volleyball finalist Shelby Ignash 25-12, 25-21, 23-25, 25-21 in the other D3 semifinal.
“They were kind of similar to us in the way that they are very good at staying composed,” TCSF junior Quinn Yenshaw said of Monroe St. Mary. “They just put the ball down and can be scrappy like us. They’ll be a really good matchup for us to compete with and see who’s the grittiest.”
Monroe St. Mary is a program tied for fifth in Michigan High School Athletic Association history with 11 state finals appearances, all but one of those since 2003.
St. Francis battled from behind much of the first set, taking its first lead at 11-10 on a Kalamazoo alignment error, only for the Comets to reel off five straight points. A Coco Miller ace put SF up 24-23, but Kalamazoo knotted it up again. Yenshaw closed out the set with back-to-back kills, including a cross-court spike to end it at 26-24.
Kalamazoo Christian’s student section held up oversized “Uno” cards with the Comets within a point of clinching the second set, with a Hayden Deming kill closing it out. The Glads led 24-23 on an Avery Nance ace before the Comets scored three unanswered.
St. Francis led 7-4 in the third on a Landry Fouch kill before a 6-0 Comets run. Kalamazoo won the set that featured 20 ties or lead changes by a 25-21 count.
After the third set, St. Francis tweaked its offense to get around the Comets’ big block more often. Kalamazoo’s starting lineup featured five players between 5-foot-10 and 6 feet tall.
“My setters and I talked about that we need to mix up the sets more,” said Yenshaw, whose 26 kills would be in the top 25 in finals history if she repeated the feat Saturday. “They were kind of expecting what was hitting in the first three sets. Then we learned that if we move everybody around more and switch up the sets throughout the point, they will be more frantic and not be able to get to our swings.”
The Gladiators sprinted to an 8-1 lead in the fourth and never gave the lead back, with a pair of Fouch kills closing out the set 25-19.
“They were just absolutely refusing to lose,” Coach Nance said. “We just proved something to ourselves and proved something to everybody watching that we’re here and we’re ready to fight for it.”
The fifth set started out with Kalamazoo in a 6-4 lead, but the Comets would score only one more point the rest of the way, with Yenshaw notching a pair of kills along the back line and Nausadis blasting a pair of serves that weren’t returned from the back row.
The set went TCSF’s way so much that senior defensive specialist Grace Mason had a bump kill that put the Glads up 12-7.
“Their defense was so good,” said Comets libero Carien Ybema, who had 26 digs. “They got to everything.”
Nance put up 32 digs, with Mason adding 10, Reese Jones nine, Yenshaw seven, Reese Muma, Coco Miller and Landry Founch six each, Nausadis five and Tessah Konas three.
“Our defenders did an absolutely unbelievable job,” Coach Nance said. “There were some stellar digs in there, and there were some really good, long rallies. I can’t say enough about the defense. It wasn’t just Avery back there defending. It was all of them.”
Miller eventually chased down and saved a dig from Nance that flew into the arena’s rafters and briefly hung on a light fixture before coming back to Earth. Muma would add a foot dig later in the same third-set rally that Kalamazoo would eventually win on an Annelise de Jong kill.
“They wanted it more,” said de Jong, a 6-footer with Division 2 offers who had 20 kills and 15 digs. “They really came and they worked really hard.”
The Glads had several pancake digs, including one from Nance that led to a Muma kill in the third set.
“Just having that much more experience from last year’s team, it helped us stay a lot more composed,” Avery Nance said. “Last year, it was such a frantic time for us, and it just felt like we let the match get away from us. This year, we were really able to just take it all in and fight for every point.”
Fouch kept the Comet defense from concentrating too much on Yenshaw, adding 13 kills. Lola Brown had seven, Muma six and Nausadis four.
Konas had 27 assists and Jones 21.
“We were prepared this year to do it again,” Jones said. “We pulled it out, and it was really amazing to do that with our teammates. We always talk about doing this for each other; it’s everybody we’re doing it for, and we all believe in each other. We came back again.”
Serving was another Gladiator strength, as TCSF produced 14 aces to Kalamazoo’s eight. Nausadis and Yenshaw had four each, with three by Miller, two from Nance and one by Miller.
The Comets beat No. 8 Bronson in five sets for a regional title, knocking off honorable mention Pewamo-Westphalia in the quarters.
“Our mental errors is what kind of screwed us in the end,” said Kalamazoo Christian junior setter Reagan Zuiderveen, who had 40 assists, 15 digs, four aces, three kills and three blocks. “But in those sets that we won, we were just all having fun and we weren’t like in our head. We were just playing the game.”
The Glads are following the Comets’ path almost step for step, reaching the finals and falling with a young team (Kalamazoo Christian lost in the 2022 final to Pewamo-Westphalia), then coming back more experienced to take down a younger squad.
Kalamazoo graduated six players from last year’s finals team — including four starters and its libero — while the Glads lost two, one of whom started.
“They had a lot of returning players, and we didn’t have a lot of returning players,” said Comets head coach Carlie Southland, a Kalamazoo Christian alum who’s guided the Comets to the Final Four in all three of her years heading up the program. “That helped them because they were seasoned. They had a lot of girls return from last year, so they could just kind of build on momentum after last year, like how we did last year.”