The Mahtomedi Zephyrs fell to the Delano Tigers in three sets in a Class 3A volleyball quarterfinal Wednesday night at the Xcel Energy Center.

The Tigers dominated in the majority of categories. Mahtomedi hung around at the start of all three sets, but Delano pulled away eventually in all of them, winning 25-10, 25-15, 25-17.

The loss didn’t come as a total surprise, with Delano holding the No. 2 seed in the tournament and Mahtomedi being unseeded. Mahtomedi head coach Tia Schlundt said with a team as young as theirs, playing five sophomores, the inexperience showed and was a big factor.

“I’d say we lost at our own game,” Schlundt said. “They’re a good team, but I would definitely say we started to kind of get rattled, just being young. Obviously, the noise, the fans, the lights, just the whole thing for these guys is new. And coming into that, it kind of starts to just chip away a bit. I think that was our biggest struggle tonight, was we defeated ourselves.”

The Zephyrs competed stronger in the third set, and a few of the players attributed that to the calming of the nerves they got from playing on a big stage.

“I feel like we started to play our own game,” sophomore Sahar Ramaley said. “At first we were just really rattled, and then we started playing how we play, running our offense and really setting up our strong hitters.”

“I think our scrappiness was one of our strong suits during the season,” sophomore Claire Crothers said. “We just wouldn’t give up on a ball, and it kept us in a lot of long rallies.”

Delano recorded 14 points off service aces, seven coming from sophomore Kaelyn Wittwer. Delano sophomore Cassie Wegman talked about how much those aces meant to the team, even in games that didn’t have close scores.

“With those serves, it gives us a lot of momentum,” she said. “They may seem like small points that don’t matter, but to us, every little point matters. We need to push it one point at a time.”

Delano coach Rebecca Rue said that the serving game is what led to the team pulling away in all three sets.

“I think we got in those momentum swings, and this game is such a momentum-swinging game,” she said. “So, I would say aggressive serving, but also executing when we did get back into defense.”