East beats West in 5-game thriller, heads to state for fifth straight season

Faced with match point five times in the fifth game, Wauwatosa East fought off Wauwatosa West for a 19-17 win to take the WIAA Sectional Championship, 3-2, Thursday night at Whitefish Bay.

The Red Raiders took a 7-5 lead in the final game and from that point on neither team had more than a one-point lead until East scored three straight points after trailing 17-16, the last two on kills by senior captain Aaron Uden.

"I'm happy for Aaron," East coach John Simon said. "He made two errors at the end of game four that closed the game out, so it was nice that he came back to win it for us."

The Trojans won the first game, 25-20, but the Red Raiders got the momentum back by outscoring them, 10-5, down the stretch.

"I told the guys, we lost the game, but we now have the momentum," Simon said and sure enough the Raiders, dominated the next two games to win, 25-12, and 25-16.

"I was mad, the guys were mad," West coach Kyle Sikora said. "We didn't play well, we made a lot of errors in those two games."

So the Trojans batted back, trailing 2-games-to-1 and won the fourth game, 25-23, behind captains Mitch Lahmann and Alec Redlich, who would not allow the team to lose.

Then in the final game, Redlich gave the Trojans their last shot at a win, when his kill gave them a 17-16 lead. But the Trojans hit the ball out of bounds and then Uden went high in the air from the left side of the net to kills the final two points.

Tosa East will face Greendale at 5 p.m. on Friday at Wisconsin Lutheran College in the quarter-final match-up at the WIAA Boys State Volleyball Championship.