skip navigation

Vikings Fall to Rebels in 4 Sets on Senior Night in Pelican Rapids

By Craig Olson, 10/15/21, 8:00AM CDT

Share

The Pelican Rapids Vikings hosted DGF for their last home game of the season on Thursday night.  The Vikings also took this night to honor their seniors Tori Stephenson and Sophia Paulson and their parents for all their dedication and hard work they have put in over the years for their teammates and the volleyball program.  After the two teams split the first two sets, DGF closed out the Vikings in four sets, winning 25-17, 14-25, 25-9, 25-18.

“We hadn’t had a game in over a week and were really excited to get back on the court,” commented Head Coach Heidi Isaman.  “After having a few days to work on some lineup and defensive changes, the girls were ready to put their work to the test.  The Vikings knew the Rebels would come out with aggressive serving and that we needed to serve receive well to get our offense in system so we could use all hitters.  Set 1 we were up and down with this however.  We were struggling to receive the short serve and we had a few too many defensive and blocking errors.   However, when in system we hit the ball very well and played a solid set against the Rebels.  Set 2 we knew we needed to pass better and we made a few defensive adjustments.  The girls came out in synch right away and we controlled the offense the entire set.  Our middle hitters Ellie Welch and Anna Roisum really stepped up their game tonight on the offensive end.  We had been working all week in practice on getting our middles more involved in the offense and more aggressive and they definitely showed that progress tonight especially in set 2.  Setter Sophia Paulson did a great job of using all hitters and made good setting choices.  Defensive specialist Hazel Haugrud came back in a new role tonight after being out a few weeks and added a lot to our defense while Zoe Kekaha had a solid night in the back row.  Right side hitter Claudia Gurath made her varsity debut as a starter and did her job well.  The Vikings won set 2 playing great volleyball.  Coming off the high of winning set 2 the Vikings came out flat and not ready to build off the win.  The Rebels took advantage and took total control of set 3 winning 25-9.  Set 4 we still struggled with our serve receive but picked up our defense a bit to close the gap but without enough offense off our serve receive we could not seal the deal and ended up losing set 4 18-25.  Overall the Vikings made some big improvements tonight against a strong Rebels team which was a nice way to honor our seniors.” 

The Vikings were led by Morgan Korf (25 digs), Sophia Paulson (20 set assists, 1 ace, 6 digs), Ellie Welch (11 kills), Tori Stephenson (6 kills, 6 digs), Kelsey Isaman (5 kills, 9 digs), Anna Roisum (5 kills, 1 block kill) and Hazel Haugrud (5 digs).

The Vikings have a busy week next week topping off our last week of regular season traveling to Staples-Motley on Monday and Frazee on Tuesday.  Then participating in the Fergus Falls Invitational on Thursday before playoffs start the following week.