Baker wins GOL volleyball title

Baker owns that distinction for the first time since 2006. And, the Bulldogs remain perfect in the GOL this season at 7-0. But, not without a battle.

Baker knew it had won the GOL regular season crown after La Grande lost to Ontario Tuesday. But that didn’t mean La Grande was going to hand Thursday’s match to the Bulldogs.

In fact, the Tigers, battling Ontario for the GOL’s other state berth, gave Baker everything it wanted before falling 25-14, 13-25, 27-25, 26-28, 15-8 in the Baker gym.

Baker coach Michele McCauley said it wasn’t the fact that the Bulldogs knew ahead of time they were the league champions that made the match close. Instead, she said, it was Baker’s easy schedule the past two weeks — winning every match in three games.

“It was the type of scheduled we’ve had the past two weeks. We haven’t had that many tough matches,” McCauley said.

“La Grande passed the ball very well tonight and played very scrappy.

“This was a good match for us at this point,” McCauley said. “I would like to have like this again in the next five days. We know this is the kind of match we’ll get in the playoffs.”

Baker closes out the regular season Tuesday at Ontario, and Thursday at home against Mac-Hi. The Bulldogs haves swept both teams in straight sets twice each this season.

Baker looked like it would have another easy evening in Game 1, rolling to a quick 10-point lead and cruising to the win.

But La Grande built its own 10-point cushion in Game 2, and evened the match at a game apiece.

The teams traded 11 ties in the third game before Kylie Kitzmiller gave Baker a 26-25 edge with a hard spike. Then, with Kitzmiller serving, La Grande hit the ball out to give Baker a 2-1 lead in the match.

Game 4 was a mirror image of the third game coming down to Kitzmiller at the service line with a 26-25 lead. But this time the Bulldogs misplayed the ball allowing La Grande to tie the game and eventually even the match at two games each.

La Grande jumped out to a 3-0 lead in the deciding fifth game only to have Baker rally to take a 6-3 lead behind the serving of Darryn McCauley.

Baker then rode th enet play of Kitzmiller, Tori Brown, Annie Martin and Aly Ogan to slowly build its winning margin.

Kitzmiller scored the final two points, both coming on kills. The match winner hit the top of the net, but had enough momentum to fall on the La Grande side for the win.

Kitzmiller finished with 15 kills, and Brown eight. McCauley was 24-of-25 serving with four ace serves. Kelsy Cole added 14 assists, and Whitney Phillips 13.

“That kind of assists tells me our offense was pretty balanced on both ends,” McCauley said.

“And we had solid back row play from Becca Joseph and Emily Smith.

“I felt like we were scrappy at times,” McCauley said. “We stuck with sme balls we could have quit on. We need to clean up our blocking a little bit. But we did a pretty good job of distributing the ball along the net.”

Baker split the non-varsity matches.

Baker remained undefeated at the frosh/soph level with a 25-10, 25-17 win. The Baker junior varsity lost 25-22, 25-17.