Gresham volleyball team wins CWC-North title outright

The Gresham Community High School volleyball team eased to a win over White Lake on Oct. 12 in Gresham to claim the outright title in the Central Wisconsin Conference-North Division.

Gresham won by scores of 25-12, 25-11, 25-1 to finish 7-0 in CWC-North play this fall. The Wildcats haven’t lost a conference match in the past three seasons.

“We all work together so well,” said Gresham coach Tim Wild. “We don’t have any problems that we’re dealing with amongst the team. We get out there and all the girls work together. The seniors are supporting the freshmen.

“It’s huge when everybody has got confidence in each other and we’re cheering each other on. That really turns into motivation out on the court, which turns into points for us and has helped us throughout this season.”

Wild went on to mention how critical the team’s three seniors — Hannah Cerveny, Kalayla Tucker and Valarie Cerveny — were to the team this season. On what was also the team’s senior night, he praised the trio’s enthusiasm on and off the court and added they make it fun to come to practice, which in turns leads to better execution on the court during matches.

The Wildcats only dropped two sets in their seven conference matches this fall.

“It was a lot of hard work and a lot of dedication in order to win the conference,” said Tucker, the team’s libero. “We’ve won it like three years in a row now, and we wanted to keep that going.”

Gresham claimed the 2019 CWC-North title with a perfect record.

In 2020, the Wildcats were 3-0 in conference matches before having to shut down their season because of COVID issues. Gresham finished its season competing in the alternate fall season this past spring, and ended up making it to sectionals.

Despite dealing with some injuries and missing players at times because of COVID protocols, the Wildcats were able to emerge atop the conference standings again this fall.

“Having fun in practice but also working hard,” said Hannah Cerveny on what helped the team become conference champions again. “In practice, we have a mindset that we’re playing our hardest competition, so we just practice our very hardest and our very best so that we can get ready for our next competition.”

“I think we all really wanted to do well this season and we put in a lot of work over the summer,” said Valarie Cerveny. “We all come into practice always wanting to work and get better.”

In its final CWC-North win over White Lake, Gresham got off to a bit of a slow start, falling behind 9-4 and having to take an early timeout.

The Wildcats returned to the court with more energy and rattled off a 12-0 run to seize control of the match. Junior Chloe Bohl was serving for the Wildcats on the run.

Gresham led for the entire second set, but a 3-0 White Lake run made it a 14-10 score. Valerie Cerveny got the hosts back on track with a kill, and then behind strong serving from sophomores Josie Cerveny and Maddie Haffner, Gresham ended the set on an 11-1 run.

The Wildcats capped the conference season with about as dominant a set as a team can play.

Valerie Cerveny had a couple kills early on while freshman Lexi Baddmoccosin-Barnes provided strong serving. Gresham claimed the first 10 points before a serving error gave White Lake its lone point of the set.

Another Valarie Cerveny kill put Haffner back to serve, and she never relinquished the spot as the hosts took the final 15 points.

Haffner tallied 16 service points on the night and added seven aces. Bohl and Baddmoccosin-Barnes had 13 service points each, with Bohl serving eight aces and Baddmoccosin-Barnes six.

Valarie Cerveny led the Wildcats with 11 kills, while Haffner had four. Hannah Cerveny had 15 of the team’s 19 assists.

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