After spending most of the afternoon on the bottom looking up, Aberdeen Central emerged as the last one standing at Golden Eagles Arena.

Central stayed aggressive and eventually took down the stubborn Yankton Gazelles 21-25, 22-25, 25-19, 25-23, 21-19 in an Eastern South Dakota Conference volleyball thriller in which both teams survived four match points before the Golden Eagles finally prevailed.

“They just kept swinging,” said Central coach Jackie Bindenagel of her players. “At the end of set five, those kids took nothing off the ball. They made some really gutsy plays.”

At the center of that aggressive attack were senior Grace Kuch and freshman Lauryn Burckhard. Kuch, who was a weapon from the opening serve, finished with 23 kills, while Burckhard came up huge down the stretch on the way to 21 kills.

“Losing just wasn’t an option for me today,” Kuch said, “and I knew I had to have that mindset so the rest of the people could have that mindset with me.”

Kuch was a force from the get-go but the Eagles could not take advantage of it, dropping the first two sets. Central was unable to slow down the Gazelles, who pressured the hosts at nearly every opportunity.

“We could not serve them out of system and I didn’t think that our serves were not aggressive,”‘ Bindenagel said. “I thought we tried to hit some seams, but they were in system all afternoon.”

Despite facing the long prospect of having to win the final three sets after losing the first two, the Eagles did not panic.

“I thought our kids, they just bounced back. We talked about at the beginning of set three, this is set one,” Bindenagel said. “We’re just going to go right now. You just have to forget about some things in volleyball and I thought they did that today.”

Kuch, for one, was not detered. She believed the Eagles could make a comeback.

“I knew we could win. We’re really good team. We just had to get a little angry,” Kuch said. “We could be a little disappointed in ourselves, but we just needed to keep going.”

Central mounted a comeback and it coincided when Burkchard started having a major impact.

The Eagles rolled through set three and then had their backs against the wall in set four, trailing 23-22 before scoring the last three points to force a fifth set.

Burckhard had three kills to help stake Central to a 14-10 lead in the final set. However, Yankton fought off all four match points and soon had four different match points of its own, but could not convert.

Burckhard, who had just missed an attempt long, saved one of those match points by pounding down a winner. She said was going to stay aggressive no matter what.

“I knew it had to be over and in to keep it going,” Burckhard said, “so that was the mentality to try to get the next point.”

Burckhard trusted in her ability to make a play with the match on the line, despite having just missed an attempt a few points before.

“It’s a little tough to know you just hit one out, but you just have to keep going, I guess,” Burckhard said, “because I know that I can hit them in pretty hard.”

In the end, Central made just one more play and that was enough to produce a hard-fought victory.

“I’m proud of them,” Bindenagel said. “They could have rolled over and they did not.”

As a result, the Golden Eagles remained unbeaten in conference play, with some key ESD matches coming up on the near horizon.

“We’re still undefeated in the ESD,” Kuch said. “We have a little chip on our shoulders for once, so we use that. We carry that.”

Next up for the 8-3 Golden Eagles is a non-conference match on Monday against O’Gorman at Golden Eagles Arena. The Knights will present their own set of challenges, according to Bindenagel.

“It’s not going to get any easier,” Bindenagel said. “O’Gorman’s solid in every single position and we’ll have to work hard on Monday, but these kids always seem to work hard.”

Serving: Aberdeen Central 97-108 7 aces (Sawyer Bahr 20-22 4 aces, Ayrlie Waldo 19-21 1 ace, Emma Dohrer 14-15 1 ace, Grace Kuch 13-15 1 ace).

Hitting: Aberdeen Central Kuch 48-53 23 kills, Lauryn Burckhard 50-56 21 kills, Ashley Wangler 19-24 6 kills, Kenadi Withers 17-21 5 kills).

Setting: Aberdeen Central 151-154 49 assists (Waldo 95-96 33 assists, Dohrer 38-40 14 assists).

Digs: Aberdeen Central 82 (Waldo 18, Bahr 14, Kuch 14, Dohrer 13, Madison Miller 11).

Blocks: Aberdeen Central 4 solo 5 assists (Wangler 1 solo 2 assists, Kuch 2 solo, Waldo 1 solo, Withers 2 assists, Burckhard 1 assist).

Records: Yankton 3-10; Aberdeen Central 8-3.