Tosa East volleyball players Plaisted, Mihelich earn postseason honors

The Wauwatosa East boys volleyball team had another excellent season, doing some things they always do, but one they haven't done in 10 years - win a Greater Metro Conference championship.

"When we set out, every season we have lofty goals," veteran coach John Simon said. "They usually involve winning a tournament, which we did (Waukesha West Invitational), getting a couple of big wins, like we did over Marquette and the Germantown-type teams.

"Winning conference is another one and we did that for the first time in 10 years. So being conference champs, for the first time since 2003, getting to state for the seventh year in a row, those are things we can hang our hat on."

The Red Raiders had two players earn All-State honors - junior Ben Plaisted made first-team and senior Ben Mihelich made honorable mention.

Plaisted was also first-team all-GMC and was the conference player of the year and Mihelich was also first-team.

Senior Morgan Griffith and junior Mitch Wagner were second-team all-conference and senior Mich Dillon was honorable mention.

Plaisted was named the Red Raiders' MVP and Mihelich was the Best Defensive Player.

Senior John Murphy won the Most Improved Player Award.

Statistical leaders were as follows:

Kill leaders were Plaisted (385) and Mihelich (379); Assists - Wagner (671) and Plaisted (231); Digs - Mihelich (192), Murphy (118), Griffith (115) and Plaisted (109); Aces - Mihelich (45), Plaisted (33) and Griffith (31); Blocks - Plaisted (41) and Dillon (30).

The Red Raiders lose five seniors to graduation - Dillon, Griffith, Mihelich, Murphy and Sam Schulz.

"As a group, there was a lot of quality senior leadership here," Simon said. "Without that, we would have not had the success we had.

"We battled a lot of adversity and the seniors were part of it with injuries to Morgan, Mihelich, Schulz and Dillon. There were challenges we were able to overcome because of the good leadership they provided."

In particular, though, Simon praised Mihelich's efforts this year.

"Ben was a great captain," Simon said. "He stepped up his game after being hurt the first month of the season. He worked hard on improving his passing, serving and attacking. He showed you have to keep working on it and it rubbed off on the team."