“We started off the day with pool play where we saw Lake of the Woods in our first set,” reported Barnesville Head Coach Megan Askegaard. “They had some great size at the net and attacked us a great deal from the right side. Our defense wasn’t the sharpest to start the morning, but we found ways to pick up balls and to get in on offense in order to battle back and take them in 3 (26-28, 25-20, 15-9).” Our second pool play match was against Perham. We haven’t played them yet in the regular season so we weren’t too sure what to expect. They have a couple good hitters at the net and their blockers did a nice job defending our middles. We challenged them more on serve receive and were able to score some points on offense this way as well as creating some out of system play on their side of the net. They were tight matches, however our defense allowed us to once again be successful, winning 2-0 (25-22, 25-23). Our final pool play match was against Detroit Lakes. We played them tough but they were just too much for us this morning. Our block was just a little slow and we couldn’t get going into our offense as quickly as we needed to against a team like the Lakers. We fell in 2 close sets, 25-18, 25-22, and that put us into second place in our pool according the tie breaker criteria. We were actually tied with DL for wins, losses and points, but since they beat us head to head they went on to face Hawley for the Championship and we played EGF Greenwave in the 3rd place game. I was proud of how we played together in the tournament today. We definitely improved our game over the course of the day and are continuing to get better each day.”

Statistical leaders for the Trojans were Emily Condon (71 digs, 2 ace serves), Lexi  Bolgrean (52 digs, 23 kills, 38/40 serving, 6 aces), Kim Maesse (37 set assists, 20 digs, 36/36 serving, 4 aces), Katie Newell (39 set assists, 15 digs, 32/34 serving, 2 aces), Sam Passa (33 digs, 3 blocks, 21 kills, 24/25 serving, 5 aces), Emily Bredman (16 kills, 5 blocks), Jordan Tschumperlin (13 kills, 10 blocks, 9 digs, 21/23 serving, 1 ace) and Olivia Sorenson (4 blocks, 7 kills, 3 digs).

As a team the Trojans served 95.6% (195/204) for the tournament.

Barnesville will travel to Underwood on Tuesday.