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Trojans Win Hawley Booster Volleyball Tournament

By Craig Olson, 09/19/21, 11:45AM CDT

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The Barnesville volleyball team had a terrific day in Hawley for their Booster Club tournament on Saturday, starting with a 2-0 (25-19, 25-8) win over East Grand Forks, winning two straight from Perham 25-20, 25-10, sweeping TRF 2-0 (25-16, 25-17) and completing the day with a 2-1 (25-11, 22-25, 16-14) over the host Hawley Nuggets.

 

“We started the day off with pool play sets against East Grand Forks,” said Barnesville Head Coach Megan Askegaard. “We had previously played EGF the second match of the season so we were prepared for how we might match up with them. We had a very slow start to the morning and started trailing in the first set 0-9 before we got things moving the way we wanted them to in the set. We passed well and were able to get settled in once we woke up a bit. For our second pool play match we played Perham over on the center court. This was our first time meeting the Jackets since summer tournaments. They have some good hitters and a setter who moves the ball very well on the net for them. Our defense did a nice job against them with a strong block up on the net as well as digging the ball in the backcourt today. We had many long rallies with them and we were able to hang on and win many of them. The first set was a battle and then we had the momentum with us and it really affected the way that they played on their side of the net. The girls played hard and finished the match with a strong cruise to 25. Our third and final set in pool play we met up with Their River Falls Prowlers. They had some nice height on their side along with 3 left handed players. Our block did a nice job adjusting to where they needed to be against a different hitter. We passed the ball very well and we were able to use our middles a great deal in this match against them. Our strong serve also played a huge role into how we were able to get things going.”

The Trojans went 3-0 in pool play and wound up playing Hawley back on the center court for the championship. “We came out with great strength in this first set against the Nuggets serving them tough and really going after their serve receive passers,” commented Askegaard. “Our defense was also picking up all the balls that were coming on our side. Katie Newell worked to get the ball to her hitters when she needed to and we came out on top fairly easily in the first set. However, with the game of volleyball we all know that the momentum can shift at any time. We found ourselves struggling to string points together in the second set and we were reading their serves like we had previously in the set. Hawley took advantage of a few of our errors and made them count. We hung with them, however it was just a little too late to get things to turn around in our favor. We moved into the 3rd final quick set and we traded points with them back and forth. They always seemed to have just a couple points on us the entire set. We held on strong by attacking out of the middle and playing good defense. We really needed to focus on serves in the court and putting our 3rd contact down on their side. Kiana Amundson came back to serve the final two points of the match to give us the win.”

Newell distributed 77 set assists on the day.  Hitting leaders were Emily Bredman (27 kills, 5 blocks), Emily Smith (24 kills, 4 blocks), Lexi Bolgrean (21 kills, 1 block) and Anna Standford (16 kills, 4 blocks).

The Trojans had 25 serving aces as a team, led by Kenzie Skogen and Sydney Strand with 7 and 5, respectively.  Stanford had 4 aces, Bolgrean, Newell and Amundson each added 3 aces.

Pacing the defensive effort were Strand (31 digs), Stanford (30 digs), Bolgrean (21 digs), Standford (21 digs) and Newell (18 digs).