Sabers can't close door on Warriors

Franklin - The great "Star Trek" parody "Galaxy Quest" had a motto that it used over and over throughout the course of the hilarious movie.

"Never give up, never surrender."

But even the Tim Allen-led crew would have said "Enough already!" and surrendered long before the Muskego boys volleyball team ever thought about doing so against host Franklin in a noisy and exciting WIAA sectional semifinal on Nov. 1.

The Warriors were down 2-1 in the best of five match and 21-16 in the fourth before scoring seven straight points and rallying to tie the match at two games each.

Then in the fifth game, Muskego found itself with its back against the wall at 14-10. All the Warriors did then, was fight off four match points, score seven of the match's last eight points and pull out an improbable 25-23, 15-25, 28-30, 29-27, 17-15 decision that put the team on the verge of its first-ever WIAA state tournament berth.

But for Franklin coach Chris Dibb, whose senior-dominated squad went to state in 2010 and was looking forward to another trip this season, there is nothing but empty questions including "How in heck could this happen?"

"I definitely won't fault the kids for what happened here," he said. "They gave it their all. The 14 seniors we had went out with pride. I just credit Muskego with having great resiliency.

"It wasn't a rotation thing, because all five of our primary hitters are good and all of our defensive guys are sound. It's just one of those things. In a situation like ours, you expect to win nine times out of 10.

"Except not this time."

In game three, the Sabers had a 23-19 lead but the Warriors refused to give in, fighting off five game points before a kill by Franklin's Steven Fons and an error at the net finally gave the home team the win and a 2-1 match lead.

In game four, the Sabers had leads of 14-9 and 20-15 before Muskego went on a 7-0 run.

This time, Franklin fought off three game points before Muskego clinched it.

The fifth game had enough ups-and-down to break the strongest yo-yo string, as Muskego got out to 4-1 and 7-4 leads before the Sabers went on two 4-0 runs to go up 14-10.

But then Muskego went on a final run to end Franklin's season.

Dibb was just sad his team couldn't reward the big crowd.

"It's been a great atmosphere for these matches the last two years," he said. "We just couldn't ask for any more support than we've gotten. It's just tough losing this way in front of them."