NORTON SHORES – One sign of a truly great team is the ability to overcome adversity.

The Western Michigan Christian volleyball team did a lot of that in the finals of last weekend’s Greater Muskegon Athletic Association City Tournament at Reeths-Puffer High School.

The Warriors trailed Whitehall 15-13 in the first set, then officials at the scoring table realized that one of the WMC players had served out of turn. WMC was penalized four points, suddenly trailed 15-9, and went on to lose the set 25-12.

WMC Coach Trent Smillie was calm despite the disturbing turn of events, and accepted the call because it was correct.

“We had the wrong server, and the rules are the rules,” he said.

Smillie’s calm demeanor obviously had an impact, because the Warriors didn’t panic. They fought back to win the second set, lost the third and were on the brink of elimination, but battled back again to win the fourth set and force a final tiebreaker.

At that point there was no stealing the Warriors’ momentum. They jumped out to an early lead in the fifth set, kept fighting as Whitehall kept pace point-for-point, and finally pulled out a 15-13 victory to capture the first city tournament championship in WMC history.

It was a very nice finish to a story that went back one season, when WMC lost in the finals of the city tournament to Montague. The Warriors brought back most of the players from that team and came into the tournament as the No. 1 seed.

Now they are at the peak of the Muskegon County high school volleyball scene, above teams from bigger schools like Mona Shores, Reeths-Puffer (two semifinal teams in the tournament) and Whitehall.

WMC, now 37-5 on the season, will be tested again over the next few days. They will host Whitehall in a rematch of the city finals  on Thursday, and it’s bound to be another classic. On Saturday they will host the Lakes 8 Conference tournament.

The Division 3 state tournament is just around the corner, as well, and the Warriors will be legitimate candidates to make a deep run.

“It’s huge,” said WMC Coach Trent Smillie about finally winning a city tournament title. “We were the number one seed, and that’s never happened. We won the tournament, and that’s never happened. We have a trophy case at the school with lots of different trophies, but there are none of these. It will be nice to add one.”

Another sign of a great team is having one player who can take control in tight situations and get the job done.

For the Warriors, that’s senior Kyla Wiersema, the biggest hitter on a team with several fearsome players who dominate at the net.

Wiersema was dominant in the critical fifth set of the championship match. She scored the first three points with big kills, and ended up pounding home several more big points down the stretch.

She also hit a career milestone in the tournament, passing the 1,000 kill mark and ending up at 1,009.

“It took me a while to hit the ball because (Whitehall’s) blocking is so good, and they definitely pounded me,” Wiersema said about the fifth set of the finals. “I think we realized that we had to slam it.”

Smillie said Wiersema was just playing the way she always does in big moments.

“We’ve played a lot of the strongest teams in Division 3, and she’s the best hitter I’ve seen,” the coach said. “She’s capable of doing that during basketball season, too.”

Several other Warriors also had very big days.

Maddie Wiersema set a new school record for blocks in a match with 11. Kyla Wiersema (10 blocks) also broke the old record of nine, while Libby Mast tied it.

All three of those players also broke the school’s individual season block record of 99 on Saturday, and their totals will keep growing for the rest of the campaign.

“Any of the three girls could set the new season blocks record, so we will wait and see the totals,” Smillie said. “This is an amazing thing that three girls could all break that record.”

Veteran Whitehall coach Ted Edsall was philosophical about losing the city title match. His steam is having a great season with a 26-4-1 record, and he knows his girls will have a chance to avenge the tough loss on Thursday.

“It was a great match,” he said. “They are big and great. Our goal was to out-serve and out-pass them, and in the games we won we did that. I thought every player on my team played fantastic. We just got beat by a team that played better.”

After the tournament trophy was presented, Coach Smillie pointed to senior libero Haley Breuker, noting that she lives in Whitehall and drives all the way to Norton Shores every day to attend WMC.

Smillie said he gave her the trophy to take home for the rest of the weekend, because “she could have gone to Whitehall. I wanted her to know that she made a good choice.”