Shorewood Girls Volleyball Team Ends Impressive Season with Regional Loss to Whitefish Bay

The Shorewood girls volleyball team’s season came to an end Thursday night with a loss to neighboring rival Whitefish Bay in the second round of the WIAA regionals.

The match marked the third time in three second-round trips over the past six years that the Greyhounds have seen their season end at the hands of the Blue Dukes, but also marked the Greyhounds’ first trip past the first round since 2008.

The difference this year — first-year Shorewood head coach Ryan Roessler.

“When we started this season, we made a list of goals and one of the goals was to host two regional games," Roessler said. "I told them, ‘You need to draw a No. 1 or No. 2 seed.’ Half of them asked me ‘What’s a regional?’”

Shorewood more than doubled its win total this year with a 10-16 record overall, 5-2 in the Woodland Conference, and a No. 1 regional seed for the first time in recent history. It was a stark contrast from previous years, with Shorewood collecting just one win last year, and four over the past two seasons.

“They have had a struggling program for a while and coming in we just had some girls that were never really challenged,” he said. “I knew they could play at a high level, they just needed to believe that they could."

Hitter and team captain Sydney Cross said it became apparent early in the season the team would improve its record as Roessler focused on basics like passing and setting. Cross, who's in her senior year and third year on the team, said she was looking forward to a regional final on Saturday, but now ''her season is over."

"We won a scrimmage against this team (Whitefish Bay) earlier this year and we hadn't played as a team together yet, and that was the point we thought, hey, this team may actually be good," she said. "We were hoping we could take this one."

Rossler said he worked heavily on service, running a strong offense and working on plays, things most of the team hadn't done in past years.

"I just showed them how to play volleyball," he said.

The Greyhounds stumbled early in the season, dropping seven of their first eight matches. They would, however, split their remaining 18 matches with nine wins.

"A couple times throughout the year they played poorly against teams and they went back to that losing mentality of last year," he said. "Once they got over that, they really found out they can play with any team."

Shorewood's late season comeback mirrored Thursday's match. The Greyhounds dropped the first two games, squandering a 10-point lead in the second game, but battled back to force a game 5. They lost in devastating fashion, 15-13, in game 5.

“We knew coming in that Whitefish Bay was going to be a tough team to beat … but this is probably one of the best games we’ve seen all year,” Roessler said.

Roessler is losing five seniors next year, but he's optimistic about the success of next year’s team, as this team is strong all around.

“Hopefully we can build on this season, and next year make it to that regional final,” Roessler said.