GILMAN VOLLEYBALL - Youth shows early on as Pirates fall at Athens, go 1-1 at Thorp

The Gilman Pirates are excited about where their young volleyball team can end up, but the start of their 2025 journey has gotten off to a rocky start.

In their first best-of-five match of the season Tuesday, the Pirates won the first set but struggled to find any consistency after that and fell 3-1 at Athens in nonconference play. The match was similar to the teams’ matchup a week prior in the Medford Invitational, where Gilman got the first set but then dropped the next two and Athens took the match.

Tuesday’s match, however, featured a plethora of Gilman errors that gave Athens a much easier path to victory than the Pirates hoped. It was a reminder that success will take time to achieve.

“We will be working on confidence and consistency,” Gilman head coach Janice Komanec said. “As we’ve said before, we do have an athletic group that can be pursuing a high level of play, but we have to build the confidence for them to make the smart and aggressive plays consistently. We have a lot of young players getting their first real varsity experience, so we just need to keep learning from every touch and every point and every game.”

The now 1-6 Pirates made some good things happen in the first set at Athens. Shae Drier served up three aces and had another not returned. Her last ace put Gilman up 17-14, but a 5-0 run suddenly put Athens up 19-17. Gilman responded to that little bit of adversity and eventually took the lead at 23-22 when Allison Olynick blasted an attack right into Athens’ attempted block. Aubrey Mann found the sideline with a kill and she tapped a free ball for the clinching point in Gilman’s 25-22 win.

A Brynn Komanec ace and some early offense from Reece Weir had game two tied 7-7 when things started slipping away. Gilman was still within 16-12 after a Mann corner kill. Weir’s kill made it 18-13, then Athens ripped off seven straight points to win 25-13 and even the match at a set apiece.

Athens then scored the first seven points of game three and led 14-2 before a Komanec kill and a Weir block slowed the Blue Jays for a moment. The lead grew to 13, Gilman got it to 22-11 after two Addison Vick kills, but Athens scored the next three to win 25-11.

Gilman led game four 4-2 before Athens took over and closed out the match 25-13.

“We got set one, but the entire night, including the first set win, included just way too many errors for a team to have a chance to win,” Janice Komanec said. “Athens accumulated 97 points on the night and 72 of them were from our errors which included attacking errors, serving errors, blocking errors, serve receive errors, and communication errors.”

Athens improved its early-season record to 5-7, which includes a 34th-place finish at this past weekend’s Menomonie Sprawl.

Gilman will aim to make forward progress at Saturday’s Prentice Invitational, an event the Pirates have had success at in the past. Along with the host Buccaneers, Mellen, Butternut, Mercer and Medford’s JV team are expected to attend.

Gilman meets another Marawood North team Sept. 11 when it hosts Abbotsford for the home opener at 7:15 p.m.

Splits at Thorp

Thursday’s annual Thorp triangular wound up with all three teams earning 1-1 splits for the evening.

Thorp opened with a 2-1 win over Owen-Withee, then the Blackhawks met Gilman in round two and outlasted the Pirates in three sets. Owen-Withee won the first one 25-17, Gilman tied the match with a 25-22 win in set two but Owen-Withee took the decisive third set 15-10.

In round three, Gilman forced the three-way tie by taking out the host Cardinals in three sets. Gilman won the first game 27-25, Thorp answered 25-22 and Gilman took game three 15-10.

“We left the Medford tournament happy with our level of play against the teams there, however, we did not carry that into Thursday evening,” coach Komanec said. “The gym was much quieter, and the level of play was a bit slower paced, and we unfortunately settled into that rather than playing the faster pace that we were reaching last Tuesday as well as the level of communication we had at the Medford tournament. We were very quiet as a team and not as aggressive as we could be.”