Week #1 Update - Great Start

The first weekend has come and gone and what a great start for the program. We travelled down to Orange City, IA to Northwestern College for a tournament this past weekend. We came out of it 3-1 and feeling very good about what we accomplished and aware of the areas that we need to improve.

We found out that we are a team that will not quit until the last whistle of the match. We won our first 3 matches of the tournament in either 4 or 5 games. Our 1st match was against Mayville State, we came out very quick and explosive and put Mayville in a complete reactive mode to our style. We jumped out to a quick 2-0 game lead and then Mayville made a little push to take the 3rd game before we ended up taking the 4th game. Our second match against Valley City State was not the same as the first match, we were the ones that were not ready to play at first as we dropped the first two games of the match. We found our stride in the 3rd game with a solid showing but then came out in the 4th game a little flat and faced a 23-18 deficit. We went on to be the cardiac kids and pulled out a 27-25 game win to force a 5th game. The 5th game started out like all the rest, we were flat again, it was 8-4 at the change of side and I think it even got to a 11-5 deficit before we stormed back to battle it out for a 18-16 5th game win to clinch the match. We started the match at 8:30 and didn't get out of the gym until close to 11pm. It was one great 1st match day of the season.

The second day had some similar feeling to the first day, our first match was against Waldorf and we jumped out quick in both of the first 2 games to and took care of business. We lacked just a little bit of concentration in the 3rd and let that one get away from us before we clinched the match in the 4th game with another solid performance. Our second match of Saturday had playing against a very talented defensive team in Baker, They had us searching for ways to create offense. We started off very slow but found a way in the first game to get us in fight before we dropped it 23-25, the 2nd game was not one we want to mention, and the third we started off very slow again but found a way to battle it out again before we dropped it 24-26. In one way it was disheartening to see that we played rather poorly but exciting at the same time to know that even when we play below our true level that we can find ways to possibly pull out some wins with a little bit more luck.

This was an exciting and fun first weekend. Everyone who traveled got an opportunity on the court and a chance to contribute to our success. We use many different lineup combinations and got to see some great moments out of our players. As expected we got very good offensive performances all weekend out of Ashley Kley and Jen Miner. We also saw solid offensive contributions Jayna Morrill, Kacie Sanderson, Sarah Stahlke, and Sam Flynn. I would like to point out the great all-around play that Polly Gill provided for the team this weekend. She did an excellent job of passing, defending and providing timely attacking to our wins. Megan Cronberg found some time in the matches that gave her quality experiences and helped her get a little more comfortable with our offense.

Amye Brown and Nikki Gleich didn't wonderfully with our libero position as they both shared that role. Both provided good serve receive ball control and made great defensive hustle plays. Kalissa Wade did an excellent job with her court opportunity and being a great energy giver the entire tournament. Leah Miiller found out how truly versatile she can be as she filled the role as a backup MH successfully as well as a DS. Leah had a spectacular match against Valley City as she sparked us defensively in the 3rd game to begin our comeback win. Andrea Johnson got a lot of court experience this weekend at the MH position. She provided a change of pace for us and added a little more size to our lineup. She too helped spark our comeback match win vs. Valley City.

Our most impressive players of the weekend were Carina Fesenmaier and Brooke Warne. Carina performed very well in her first full weekend running our fast paced offense. She put our hitters into very good situations where they could have many options for their attack. My MVP of the weekend is Brooke Warne. Brooke saw limited action in every match but she absolutely played her role to near perfection. Brooke was our serving specialist for the weekend as she served and defended for one of our middles. We had our biggest runs of points while Brooke was serving. She led us with 9 aces on the weekend and had as many digs and some of our normal rotation players in about 1/4 of the court time. Great job Brooke.

We look to continue our success from the weekend as we enter September. On the 2nd we travel to Aberdeen, SD where our JV will take on North Dakota State College of Science at 5pm and our Varsity will take on Presentation College at 7pm. We then host a tournament here in Mitchell this upcoming weekend where we will have teams from ND and Montana in town to compete. Matches are all day Friday and Saturday. We look forward to our opportunities this week and invite everyone to come watch us continue our success and watch an exciting brand of volleyball.

-Coach V