“We had a bit of a slow start on Tuesday evening over in Park Rapids against their strong middle attack and great setting,” reported Barnesville Head Coach Megan Askegaard. “We made many attacking errors and played way to careful against an aggressive team. We had a difficult time stringing any points together until we were trailing 12-20 and Katie Newell went back to the serving line and brought us a little closer and closed the gap to 17-20 before they came at us with their big middle hitter. We put up a good battle, however it was a little late in the set to pull off the win. We came back with the momentum we ended set one with and really pushed to score a couple points in each rally. Sam Passa found success serving when she really picked on a couple of their passers and made them come at us out of system without their big attacker. We were up 14-4! We were able to control the match with our defense coming in strong for us once again. Our middles were really active in attacking and keeping their blockers always guessing. 3rd set was UGLY…. game of mistakes and us just flat out being too careful. The girls rallied back and worked to trade points and get out of serve receive as quickly as we could against their strong serving from their setter. Our goal was to make sure we put up a few more points when their strong hitter was in the backrow. We fell short in the 4th set to a very good team. We were tied and back and had back and forth rallies for the majority of the set.”

Leaders for the Trojans were Emily Bredman (8 kills, 3 solo blocks, 2 block assists), Jordan Tschumperlin (5 kills, 10/11 serving, 2 aces), Olivia Sorensen (5 kills), Lexi Bolgrean (4 kills, 9/11 serving, 13 digs), Kim Maesse (12 set assists, 17/17 serving, 1 ace, 7 digs), Newell (12 set assists, 17/17 serving, 5 digs), Emily Condon (14 digs, 9/9 serving, 1 ace) and Passa (18 digs, 15/15 serving, 2 aces).