3rd-place Winamac, 5th-place Rochester show improvement at Tomahawk Invite

NM takes 6th, Valley places 7th, Caston takes 12th

BY VAL TSOUTSOURIS

Sports Editor, RTC

DENVER — The Winamac and Rochester volleyball teams showed they might be among the most improved teams in the area at the Tomahawk Invitational at North Miami Saturday.

Among area teams, Winamac went 3-1 and finished third, Rochester went 3-1 and placed fifth, North Miami went 2-2 and finished sixth, Tippecanoe Valley went 2-2 and finished seventh, and Caston went 0-4 and finished 12th.

South Adams defeated Northfield in two sets to cap off a 4-0 day and win the tournament for the fifth straight year.

Winamac

Winamac beat Caston and North Miami by identical 25-20, 31-29 scores to win its two pool matches.

They then lost to Northfield, 19-25, 25-14, 15-13 in the semifinals before bouncing back to beat Northwestern 18-25, 25-21, 15-9 in the third-place match.

Ava Malchow led with 32 kills on the day, and Grace Roth added 29. 

Maggie Keller leads the team with 101 digs and 133 serves received thus far. Younger sister Abby Keller leads in assists.

Winamac finished in 11th place at last year’s Tomahawk Invite, but first-year coach Kayley Kasten said her team’s ability to never give up has impressed her. She said she has seen a growth in confidence as well.

She said her players are best friends on and off the court.

Kasten has emphasized a thoughtful approach to the game. Kasten (nee Cervenka), who played high school volleyball at West Central and college volleyball at Huntington University, said she even talks about where her players go with the ball even after points that they win.

“Volleyball IQ has really improved,” Kasten said. “They had a good base when I took the program over thanks to who was before me. But then we’re just gradually challenging them every day and continuing to grow. … They are tired of hearing me. Even if they make a good play, I say, ‘OK, well, this would have been the easier play to make,’ or ‘This would have been the better play to make.’ It’s important to have those conversations. They’re constantly learning and just adjusting their play. These girls are absorbing, and they’re coachable, so they’re absorbing everything.”

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Aubrey WIlson Maddie Bailon

Rochester

Rochester opened their day by beating Wabash, the team that knocked them out of the 2024 and 2025 sectionals, 25-12, 25-21 in their pool play opener. Rochester then lost to Northfield 25-13, 25-21 to end any championship hopes.

The Lady Zs then beat Valley 26-24, 26-24 and North Miami 25-23, 25-16 in the fifth-place match.

Amara Wieringa led with 23 kills, Brailyn Hunter had 18, Adalyn Gonzalez had 17, and Makayla Walley had 14. Logyn Honkomp had 36 digs, and Maddie Bailon had 29. Honkomp also had 38 serves received.

Aubrey Wilson had 74 assists on the day.

“Resilience,” Rochester interim coach Stacey Wilson said when asked to assess the day. “Just not giving up. It’s a long day. They’re tired. We played; we sat. We played; we sat. So that makes for a long day too, trying to fuel your body. 

“But I think overall, I think they did well. We did a lot better at not missing serves these last two games than we did in the first ones, so I think that helped.”

Wilson cited the second set as an example of the team’s resilience. They led 24-19, but Valley staved off five match points to even the set.

But Lillian Dunbar’s service error gave Rochester a sixth match point, and Sylvia McCall, who was filling in for Makayla Walley after Walley had to leave with a left ankle injury, ended the match on a stuff block.

“Makayla sprained the same ankle that she did last summer, I think it was,” coach Wilson said. “And so it’s a precaution. She probably could have played that last match against North Miami, but we just said it’s not worth it. … Kyra (Doran) and Sylvia did great. Their swings weren’t bad at all today. It’s hard to get all those kids in there when you’re still trying to win. I thought they did a great job coming in. That’s why I let one play one set, and one play the other set. I thought that was fair for them.”

Coach Laneia Strasser and senior players Rilyn Strasser and KayLea McCarty were not there. All three attended the wedding of former Rochester athletes Wesley Meadows and Emma Sells.

North Miami 

North Miami started the day with a loss to Winamac, but they bounced back with a 25-19, 21-25, 15-6 win over Caston in their second pool match.

North Miami then beat Peru 25-13, 25-19 before falling to Rochester in the fifth-place match.

North Miami attacks out of the middle with Layla Hampton and on the pins with fellow junior Monica Hoover.

Kinley Deardorff is the setter, and Lily Greer is a promising freshman middle hitter. 

“The best part of today was beating Caston and Peru,” North Miami coach Brianne Chumbley said. “I was really impressed with how we played against Peru. We have a tendency to get a little bit of a lead but let them come all the way back, but we didn’t do that. … The worst thing today was our energy level against Rochester. I felt like we could beat them, but sitting two games did not help us. Lunch, then two games, sitting … we went in flat-footed, and I think they were just kind of over it.”

North Miami started the season by going 1-3 at the Peru Invitational a week earlier.

“Everything has improved since Peru last week,” Chumbley said. “Talking, other than in the Rochester game. … We did nothing but tip in that Peru tournament. It was tip after tip after tip after tip. And we have hitters that can hit. We’ve just got to utilize them.”

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Malaynie Costello Kinley Crabb

Tippecanoe Valley

The Lady Vikings beat Twin Lakes 25-17, 25-14 in their first pool play match before losing to South Adams 25-19, 25-20.

They rebounded after their loss to Rochester to beat Peru 25-14, 25-19 in the seventh-place match.

Malaynie Costello and Kinley Crabb had 11 kills each, and Lillian Dunbar and Crabb had 18 assists each. Dunbar, Crabb and libero Bella Newcomer had three aces each. Middle hitter Africa Baca had 7.5 blocks. Hadley Wise had 19 digs.

They fought off two Rochester set points in the first set on a Costello tip and a Baca joust at the net. In the second set, two Dunbar aces and two Costello kills helped get them even after they trailed 24-19.

Service runs from Costello and Bailey Anderson helped them assume a 14-4 lead in the first set against Peru. The second set was tied 14-14 when back-to-back kills from Wise capped off a 5-0 run. They put the match away on a Zoey Francis kill, a Costello kill and a Bella Parker ace.

“Rochester’s much improved, and they did a nice job,” Valley coach Jon Hutton said. “I thought that we had moments where in this very last match we played like we can play. I think the rest of the day, we played a little bit tight.”

Hutton said the team gets “wound up” and tries to be “perfect.” He said he has a team of “amazing athletes” who are also “smart,” but he said the team gets down on themselves when things are not “perfect.”

At one point, he huddled the players and made each player compliment a teammate.

“We’re very judgmental about ourselves and critical of ourselves, and unfortunately, that makes everything just a little bit harsher,” Hutton said. “And we see it through that lens.”

Hutton spoke of what is upcoming.

“I’m just excited about the rest of the season,” Hutton said. “Getting a couple of our first wins here. And it was a good game against South Adams, who has won this tournament for the last five years. That’s a good start for us.”

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Hadlie Coffing Kinley Crabb

Caston

Caston fell to 1-7 on the season after losses to Winamac (25-20, 31-29), and North Miami (25-19, 21-25, 15-6) in pool play and Twin Lakes (25-11, 24-26, 15-8) and Logansport (25-18, 25-15) in the place round.

Logansport’s win over Caston avenged a loss to them in the first round of the Cass County Tournament at the Berry Bowl Aug. 15.

Natalie Warner led with 21 kills on the day, including nine against North Miami. Grace Colvin and Callie Salisbury had 12 kills each.

Gigi Berry had 16 assists on the day, and Ellie Zartman had 14.

Berry leads the team in digs, and Hadlie Coffing, Ripley Beck and Caydence Calisto anchor the back row.