NILES — Missing its top two hitters going into a BCS Athletic Conference match with Berrien Springs, the Brandywine volleyball team was staring adversity right in the face.

What is a team to do when it has to shuffle its lineup due to injury and illness? Who will step up and help the team continue its winning ways?

For the Bobcats, the answer to that question was senior Maigon Conrad, who stepped up to the service line time and time again to help Brandywine defeat the Shamrocks 25-11, 25-11, 21-25 and 25-16.

Conrad finished the night with five aces. It was her serving in the second set that propelled the Bobcats to the 2-0 lead.

And despite losing the third set, Conrad and her teammates knew they just had to get back to playing their game and everything would take care of itself.

“I think about how my team is going to get back into it,” Conrad said about serving multiple points during a set. “I just think about point after point. You just have to keep going. You have to think about the point that is going on instead of the next point.”

Brandywine was coming off a split at River Valley Monday night in which the Bobcats lost for the first this season when White Pigeon defeated them 2-1.

Gone from the regular starting lineup were senior Bethany Duval (ankle injury) and Kylie Myers (illness). The two are leading hitters for the Bobcats. With them unavailable, first-year coach Ray Prestly had to move multiple players into different positions.

“I think there was only one player who was in their original spot,” he said following the match. “We run a lot of different scenarios in practice and move them out of their comfort zones. We do things out of the ordinary, and a lot of it isn’t about the fundamentals, but the mental part of the game. As a team, the team stepped up and did a phenomenal job. I was impressed.”

Prestly said that other players who did take the court on Wednesday were sick, but not to the point where they could not play.

“It was kind of a chaos match,” he said. “We will step back and regroup and slow our pace down. Sometimes, we get into playing their other team’s tempo instead of our own.”

Kristen Alvord led the Bobcats with 11 kills, while Clara DePriest added eight. Megan Schmidt and DePriest tied Conrad for the team lead in aces with five each.

Elizabeth Stockdale finished the night with 19 setting assists.

The Bobcats will not get much time to heal and recover as they are off to New Buffalo for a tournament on Saturday.