When the Bonduel High School girls volleyball team’s game with Weyauwega-Fremont went down to the wire Tuesday, Hayley Pues was there to leave her mark.
After spraining her ankle in the middle of the first game, Pues returned just 10 points later and went on to lead her team in kills (13) and solo blocks (seven). Bonduel still fell to the Indians in five sets, 25-22, 22-25, 24-26, 28-26, 15-12.
Pues fell to the ground in the middle of a point after landing awkwardly on her ankle. The referees immediately stopped the game to tend to the injury.
“My heart sunk into my stomach,” Bonduel head coach Kimberly Bodoh said. “Once I realized they were working on her ankle, I was pretty hopeful that once the initial shock of the sprain went away, they would be able to tape her and she would be good for the next game.”
Pues’ return in the first set came with Bonduel losing, 22-24, and the Indians took the game with a kill on the ensuing point.
Throughout the second set, the Bears maintained a small lead until Pues broke the game open with a kill to extend their lead to 21-15.
“I feel like all the little things were going our way. We weren’t making mistakes,” Bodoh said. “Our serving was good. All those little things that needed to fall into place for us to pull together a win was happening.”
For Weyauwega-Fremont, junior outside hitter Becky Schroeder consistently rose above blocks to find holes in the Bears’ defense. This included four kills within five plays to cut the Bears lead late in the third game.
“She is very confident,” Indians head coach Rena Tomaszewski said. “She is really coming into her own this year.”
Schroeder finished the game with 21 kills, a team high. After many swings, she began to tire, which made it easier for the Bears’ defense.
“If they continued to set her, she is going to get worn out and her hits were going to fall a little bit, and they did,” Bodoh said. “She is a phenomenal player, and we just stuck with it.”
In a close fourth set, which included neither team having a lead greater than three points in the second half of the game, Pues came up big again, earning kills to tie the game twice, 25-25 and 26-26. The Indians went on to win the game, though, by taking the next two points.
Bodoh had asked her team to be aggressive at the net, which led to a few hitting errors throughout the night. The aggressive play was what also kept Bonduel in the match.
The Bears had seven hitting errors in the decisive fifth set, which gave Weyauwega-Fremont an early advantage that it was able to sustain for the 15-12 victory.
“I wanted a lot less tipping and a lot more swinging at the ball, even if it wasn’t a perfect set,” Bodoh said. “That’s exactly what they did for me and they gave me 110 percent.”
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