By Jennifer Eisenbart
Sports Editor
It was a bizarre night of boys volleyball pretty much across the state Tuesday night in the WIAA sectional semifinals.
Nine of the 16 semifinals went at least four sets – including Burlington’s 22-25, 25-10, 25-12, 25-18 win over Kenosha Tremper.
Burlington, the top seed in its bracket, is now 33-4 overall, and will face No. 3 seed Racine Case – who beat Westosha Central in five sets – at Westosha Central at 7 p.m. today.
BHS coach Tim Gesteland said Tremper came out “on fire,” and basically took Burlington out of its passing system.
But at the start of the second game, with Tremper’s libero playing “amazingly,” BHS decided to serve short to Tremper – away from the libero.
“We started serving their big guy (Collin Klimisch) short. He couldn’t get that monster approach,” Gesteland said.
From there, the Burlington offense took over. Nolan Rueter had a team-best 16 kills, while Carson Biedrzycki added 14 and Ben Geiger seven.
Zach Gesteland, the Player of the Year in the Southeast Conference, had 36 assists, three block kills and nine digs.
Coach Gesteland also praised his libero, Garrett Schilling, who seemed to take it as a challenge with how well the Tremper libero played.
“Garrett played amazing,” the coach said. “He probably had one of the best games of his season.”
Schilling had 29 digs, most of which gesteland said were “horizontal to the ground and him throwing his body around.”
Joey Osmalek and Nick Bartlett all three blocks, while Rueter and Biedrzycki added two each in shutting down Tremper’s big hitter.
“They set their big guy 90 percent of the time,” Coach Gesteland said. “We started cheating that way.”
Among the other top teams losing sets Tuesday night were top-ranked Appleton North, 10th-ranked Germantown and fourth-ranked Brookfield Central.
All those teams recovered to win, as did third-ranked Wauwatosa East, fifth-ranked Marquette and sixth-ranked Kimberly. The top 10 ranked teams in the state are all still alive in the tournam
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