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Vikings Win Five-Set Match at Park Christian

By Craig Olson, 09/01/21, 8:15AM CDT

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The Pelican Rapids Vikings had a tight battle to open their 2021 season on Tuesday, August 31st at Park Christian against the Falcons.  The match went the full five sets before the Vikings earned a 3-2 (27-25, 22-25, 25-11, 17-25, 16-14) victory.

“This was a great match up of 2 similar teams that battled back and forth from start to finish,” reported Pelican Rapids Head Coach Heidi Isman.  “Going into this first match with 2 younger teams with not a lot of cumulative years of varsity experience we knew this match would come down to whoever had the fewest unearned points given would win the match and that came down to the wire with the Vikings coming out on top.  Both teams brought amazing energy throughout the night and it was a fun atmosphere to play volleyball with a nice crowd of fans in the stands which these girls were missing last year.” 

The Vikings started strong and executed well in set 1.  Senior setter Sophia Paulson (15 assists, 3 digs) and newcomer 8th grade setter Morgan Korf (6 assists, 3 digs, 1 ace, 1 kill) did a great job in set 1 working together to run the offense.  “We hit the ball pretty well the first set and freshman middle hitter Anna Roisum (3 kills, 2.5 blocks) ended the back and forth battle with a huge kill out of the middle.”

Isaman continued, “Second set the Falcons went on an aggressive serving run and shook our girls and we got out of sync and system quickly.  We bounced back by finding the open spot on their court to stay alive but dug too big of whole to bounce back.  After losing set 2 we needed to get ourselves back in system to run our offense.  Serve receivers Kelsey Isaman (4 kills, 12 digs, 4 aces) and Hazel Haugrud (19 digs) did just that and pass the ball well and we started to execute again.  We started to get more hitters in the offense and went on a few aggressive serving runs ourselves to create the Falcons to be out of systems and make mistakes winning set 3. Ellie Welch (8 kills, 2 blocks) and Tori Stephenson (3 kills, 4 digs, 1 ace) hit the ball well and found open spots on the court.  Being up 2-1 we still needed to get our middle hitters in the offense more and execute better to get more earned points.  This did not happen at the level we needed it to in set 4.  We passed the ball better but fatigue started to set in and we made lots of hitting errors to give the Falcons too many unearned points.  Our communication also started to drop with creating ball control issues and too many dropped balls.  As a result, the Falcons capitalized and took set 4.  Going into set 5 we knew we needed to push through the fatigue and execute better while limiting our unearned points given.  Our girls started strong and went after them with aggressive serving and hitting but the Falcons would not go down that easily and answered back with the same thing. The Falcons were at match point but the Vikings held strong to get the stop and fire back for the win.  Overall this was an up and down game for us but a great win to start the year with a close 5 set high energy battle which is what volleyball is all about.” 

The Vikings have their home opener against Hillcrest on Thursday, September 2nd.  The Vikings will be collecting items for the local food shelf at all home games so please remember to bring your nonperishable food items.