By Nicholas Huenefeld

Special to the Sentinel-Tribune

MILLBURY — The Lake volleyball team overcame a two-set hole behind the dynamic middle duo of Mylah Vorst and Keira Magers on Thursday to produce a 19-25, 23-25, 25-22, 25-16, 15-11 win over Oak Harbor.

“Oak Harbor is a solid competitor,” Lake coach Amy Vorst said. “That’s my takeaway. That’s the best Oak Harbor team we’ve played … ever. They had kids who were disciplined. They had kids who were scrappy, and they defended well.”

The Flyers (4-1, 2-0 NBC) survived in large part due to the play of Vorst and Magers, who contributed 24 and 14 kills, respectively.

Vorst, in particular, found a groove in the second set with eight terminations. She had 12 more in the third and fourth sets combined, and then she registered three kills early in the fifth set as Lake jumped out to a 4-1 advantage.

Oak Harbor slowed Vorst a little bit and opened up a 9-7 lead, but Magers tagged in to add three kills to her tally, the last of which gave Lake an 11-10 lead.

Magers then teamed with Caity Extine for a block that gave the Flyers a match point, which Lake cashed in two points later on a service error.

“We came in knowing that we had to use our middles today,” Amy Vorst said. “I don’t know why we didn’t connect as well in the first set, but I thought our serve-reception passing was great, and our setters did a phenomenal job of getting the middles involved.”

The setter tandem of Savanna Saunders and Lucy Boos combined for 46 assists, including a team-best 24 from Saunders. Defensively, Sydney Marchetto had 23 digs.

“Our passers really had it going, and our serves were great,” Mylah Vorst said. “(The atmosphere) was great. There was a lot of energy. It was all of our teammates. The bench was loud. The court was loud, and we carried it through the match.”

Oak Harbor was strong from the start, jumping out to a 16-8 lead in the opening set. A pair of aces from Marchetto buoyed a 5-0 run for Lake that pulled her team within three, but that was as close as it got the rest of the set.

The Rockets kept the momentum, reeling off the first seven points of the second. Down 10-4, Lake regrouped and seemed to find its groove in the middle, which eventually led to Vorst slamming home her seventh kill of the set to tie it at 22.

Back-to-back attack errors from the Flyers ensued, though, and Vorst’s eighth kill moments later proved not enough as a serving error gave Oak Harbor a two-set lead.

“We just have so much potential,” Oak Harbor head coach Kaytlynn Sandwisch said. “We have the energy. We just need to learn how to keep it. That’s one thing that we started to lack as the match went on. We’re a young team with one senior that plays. We’re going to figure it out.”

Despite the late push from Lake in the second set, Oak Harbor maintained momentum in the third by scoring 10 of the first 16 points.

Lake chipped away and took their first lead of the entire match at 15-14 following an Oak Harbor attack error, and that set up a back-and-forth battle.

With the set tied at 20, Lake used a 3-0 run started by a kill down the middle from Magers and finished with a right-side hammer from Extine, to gain momentum.

Clinging to a 23-22 lead a short time later, the Flyers got another kill from Magers and a tandem block from Extine and Magers to force a fourth set.

“I’m extremely proud of them for not laying down and giving up because it would have been so easy to do,” Amy Vorst said. “And I’m glad that this happened this early so they know that they can fight back and win when they face adversity.”

In the fourth set, Lake maintained a 6-4 lead early before using a big serving run from Saunders to jump ahead.

Kennedy Falkenberg terminated from the right side, and then teamed up with Vorst for a block. Following back-to-back kills from Vorst, the Flyers led 14-4.

Oak Harbor (5-1, 1-1 NBC) couldn’t trim the deficit to fewer than seven down the stretch as Vorst and Magers combined for three kills and a block over the duration to force a fifth. For the second-consecutive set, Extine teamed up on the set-clinching block.

“I’m not pleased with our blocking,” Amy Vorst said. “We work on it every day, and I feel like we couldn’t sniff a block.

“We had some big ones in the end, but overall it was not our best blocking performance. I was very pleased with serve-reception. My middle-setter connection has been an uphill battle all year, and they finally connected. I’m very proud of them for that.”

The match was played in front of a large crowd and a Lake student section that featured a Hawaiian theme, and Vorst loved the atmosphere.

“I thought our community support was amazing,” she said. “We had parents cheering. We had a student section. They were getting each other fired up. I’m so excited about this atmosphere. We haven’t had that animation in our crowd in a while, and it was phenomenal.”

Meanwhile, Sandwisch thinks her team is on the rise, and the two teams are scheduled to meet again on Sept. 24.

“I think that this showed we can hang,” she said. “We need to turn the page and work harder at practice and come ready to go for every NBC team.”

The outcome means Lake and Eastwood (5-1, 2-0 NBC) will meet in Millbury on Tuesday as the lone remaining undefeated teams in NBC play. Otsego handed Maumee its first league loss on Thursday.