BOYNE FALLS — Buckley and Bellaire hadn’t played each other this season, so they made up for that with an epic five-set match.
The Bears prevailed 25-23, 16-25, 16-25, 25-21, 15-10 victory in Tuesday’s Division 4 volleyball regional semifinals at Boyne Falls to put Buckley into the program’s first regional championship match.
Buckley (30-8) moves on to play Traverse City Christian (22-19-2) in Thursday’s regional final back in Boyne Falls at 6 p.m. Bellaire finishes the regular season 25-10-4.
The Sabres swept Mio 25-17, 25-23, 25-16 in the other regional semifinal.
“It was a rough start,” Buckley second-year coach Jordin Ellens said. “We had a rough go around, but they were able to pull it out. They had a momentum shift after Chilson hit one of those big kills, and it was all uphill from there. They have learned a lot of resilience this year. We’ve had a lot of tough matches like that, and this is why we have those — because of games like this.”
Bellaire led 13-10 in the first before Alison Moyer played a big part in a Bears 9-0 run that included four consecutive Moyer kills. The Eagles bounced back to get within one before a Moyer attack found the middle of the floor for a 25-23 win.
Bellaire bounced back with eight aces in the second set, including three in a row by Abi Yuhaus and two late from Addy Patton in a 25-16 Eagles victory to even things up.
The Eagles took the third set 25-16 before Buckley won the fourth 25-21, coming back from a 17-13 deficit.
Buckley led 6-3 early in the decisive fifth set, with Bellaire fighting back for a 7-6 lead before Bears sophomore Alison Moyer had a block and a stuff on consecutive plays to put Buckley ahead 9-7. Sophomore libero Katie Smith’s ace put Buckley to match point, and the Bears outlasted the Eagles in the match’s final volley.
The Bears were led statistically by Sladek (four digs, five kills, one ace), Chilson (12 kills, three digs, two blocks), Ally Moyer (eight kills, six blocks, two aces), Lucy Moyer (nine digs, six kills, four blocks, three aces), Kayla Milarch (three kills, two aces, two digs), Mikayla Kulawiak (two digs, one block, one kill).
“Alison started us off very strong,” Ellens said. “Then the rest of the team picked it up a little bit, and both Maddie Chilson and Maddi Sladek kind of had key times in the whole match.”
Buckley won its first district title in 19 seasons to get to regionals, all with a sophomore-dominated roster and only one senior (Sladek).
“They’ve done so much in one year,” Ellens said. “I am very excited for the rest of the tournament, and next year.”
Bellaire was led in the back-and-forth match by Addy Patton (10 aces, 17 digs, 28 assists, 4 kills), Brooklyn Fischer (18 digs, 11 kills, two blocks), Abi Yuhaus (three aces, nine digs, three kills), Tatum Molski (four digs, six kills, four blocks), Madi DePew (two aces, 14 digs, 11 kills), Alayna Elandt (26 digs), Rianna Slabosz (40 digs) and Brooklynn Stevens (three aces, 15 digs, two kills).
The Sabres lost to Buckley 25-20, 25-11 early in the season, but that was a long time ago.
TC Christian faced an early 4-1 deficit in the first game against Mio in the earlier semifinal, but the Sabres went on a 10-2 run — featuring aces from Olivia Sterol (two) and McKenna Oster — to go up 17-9 and eventually clocked in a 25-17 win.
TC Christian led 8-3 early in the second before Mio rallied to tie it up 23-23 and before Lydia Critchfield’s back-to-back kills ended the set 25-23.
“We haven’t played a lot of Class D in our season, so you kind of see a different kind of team every time you play in Division 4,” TC Christian head coach Hannah Pohlman said. “It takes us a second to adjust, but I’m really proud of how quickly they did that. Our middles contributed a lot.”
Mio pulled within four at 17-13 before the Sabres finished off the match on an 8-4 run that ended on Alyssa Wylie’s kill to the back right corner.
“We’ve been building for sure, and I think we’re peaking at the right moment,” said Pohlman, a TC West grad whose roster only has two seniors (Wylie and Shelby Oster are both middles, so they each play half the rotation).
TC Christian was led by Lydia Tebben (six digs), Critchfield (17 assists, four kills, six digs, three aces), Olivia Strehl (11 kills, four aces, one block), Kirsten Crosby (four kills, one block), Shelby Oster (five kills, four blocks), Makenna Oster (three digs, one ace), Scarlet Bouwmeester (11 kills, three digs, one block), Cahill Stimpson (14 assists) and Alyssa Wylie (two kills).
“It is so rewarding because of our hard work at practice that we put in,” Bouwmeester said. “Our team is really starting to feel how much we can do. We are really capable of a lot if we put our minds to it. Now we’re getting the flow of the team really well, so I feel like we can do this.”
Mio (12-29-3) was a surprise district winner, upsetting Hart for a championship.
“They have a lot of heart, for sure,” Pohlmann said. “We saw their district final on film, and they lost the first two sets and came back and won it, so we knew they would have heart and they would try anything to win. We were able to win because we stayed playing our game. If we tried to play theirs, they would have beat us.”
One highlight of the match was Sabres’ eighth-grader Promise Bouwmeester making her varsity debut and dishing out an assist to her older sister Scarlet on the second point she played.
“It was really cool because it was her first game being pulled up to varsity,” Scarlet Bouwmeester said. “That was her second play, so pretty cool.”
TC Christian won regionals in 2008 and 2021, while both Bellaire and Buckley came into the tournament without a regional championship.