North Butler libero nears school record for digs in West Fork sweep

SHEFFIELD – For all of the kills North Butler recorded in a 3-0 sweep of West Fork – and there were many – what people may have missed is the fact that junior libero Brooke Trees is creeping closer to the Bearcat school record for digs.

The 5-foot-2 defensive specialist needed 13 to tie the school mark against the Warhawks on Tuesday, Oct 1, but fell just one shy as she was poised to go past the mark during this Tuesday’s (Oct. 8) home conference home tilt against Rockford.

“I think she makes everything look really easy, her talent speaks for itself,” North Butler coach Laura Schwickerath said. “She’s kind of the backbone of our defense back there with her serve receive, she’s reliable. She reads things, a nice job of getting her body in a place where she needs to be. I just need to keep pushing her to communicate more, but she does a fantastic job for us.”

Everything seemed easy for the Bearcats against the 3-7 (2-4 TIC) Warhawks, which have dropped three in a row and five of their last six. It also foiled West Fork’s senior night in which all six seniors started this match in the 25-14, 25-15, 25-22 final.

Only in the third match did the Warhawks pose any problems for the Bearcats, which improved to 15-8 (6-1 TIC). Coach Abbee Dickman’s team tied the third at 19-all to force Schwickerath to call her only timeout of the match.

“I thought we were a little unfocused and not quite as intense as I would have liked us to be, but I think that was what was going on,” Schwickerath said. “I thought our serve receive was better the first two games, our serve receive was awesome the first two games and it wasn’t quite as strong the third game. And they started tipping on us a little bit, so we just needed to make that adjustment. I think we would have done that in time, but they were picking us apart in different ways.”

Indeed, the Warhawks did resort to the tip with Emily Caspers recording five of her 13 kills off of tips in the last set.

However, Sydney Eiklenborg, who finished with a match-high 16 kills on the left side, had her way against West Fork.

“They don’t have a lot of blockers,” Schwickerath said. “They have a couple blockers in the middle, but that’s about it, so as a hitter when you know you are going 1-on-1 or you don’t have a blocker, you know, your eyes get pretty big. I think she was excited about that. She was having a good night.”

Brynn Salge tallied all 40 assists for North Butler in the match.

“I think we’re continuing to make strides in our setter-hitter connection,” Schwickerath said. “We’re trying to run a quicker offense to get teams more off-balance, to be a little bit more unpredictable. But, we’re still working on it every day. I think our passes are there, we need to put everything all together consistently.”

Dickman couldn’t be reached for comment.