“This is everything to us,” Coldwater senior outside hitter Olivia Broering said. “I always dreamed of this and to join those great players and to leave this legacy, means everything.”
The Cavaliers (29-0) set the tone from the first serve, taking the lead and never relinquishing it in the opening set. Five Coldwater players lit up the scoreboard, led by senior middle hitter Morgan Blasingame with six kills. The rowdy Mercer County crowd was on its feet as the Cavaliers went up 1-0.
“Before the match, they were just locked in,” Marion Pleasant libero Madi Pendleton said of Coldwater. “They were not playing around.”
The Spartans mustered their first lead of the night early in a tightly-contested second set that included 11 ties. Knotted at 17, Coldwater senior outside hitter Spencer Etzler slammed in a go-ahead kill as the Cavaliers closed out the set on an 8-1 run.
Coldwater maintained the momentum in the third set, jumping out to a quick 8-1 lead and forcing Spartans coach Koreen Ute to burn her first timeout. The Spartans scrambled to find an answer for the balanced Cavaliers offensive attack.
“We knew it was going to be a big task,” Ute said. “They’re a very thorough team, not just big hitters.”
Blasingame took the helm late in the third set with a block and trio of kills to get the Cavaliers to match point, 24-11. A hitting error by the Spartans moments later sealed the Coldwater win as the Cavaliers tallied the 148th state championship for the powerhouse MAC.
And while the perfect season is one for the record books, it was never the focus for the Cavaliers.
“We’ve had the motto, ‘one point at a time and one set at a time’ all season,” coach Etzler said.
And once the postseason began, regular-season records meant nothing.
“We went into the tournament 0-0 like everyone else,” Blasingame said. “That was our mindset.”
Blasingame finished the night with a team-leading 16 kills with Etzler adding 12 and a pair of aces.
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