“Well we had a little bit of a slow start,” said Head Coach Megan Askegaard of the Trojans.  “I thought we were extremely hesitant on serve receive and we were not communicating like we needed to on the first ball. We also missed 8 serves in the first set. I like how aggressive we were with the ball, however, we still need to keep it in the court when we are in need of a few points. We traded points back and forth with them until we were able to be in control of the set. We definitely had too many errors in the first set that made it difficult to create and runs of momentum.”

Emily Smith opened up the second set with 4 strong serves before the Trojans had an error on defense stopping their run at the start of set two. “Kenzie Skogen came in the back row to again push our lead at the start to 7-1,” reported Coach Askegaard. “We were in much better system at the start of this set, but we need to play strong start to finish. Park Rapids caught us standing and watching a little bit too much on defense. Our net defense struggled getting a good touch on the block a few times against their hitters. The girls worked really hard together and fought hard to the finish.”

Askegaard continued, “The third set was exactly what we needed to end the night. Emily Smith started the set out with a strong 6-0 serving run before we had a hitting error on our side of the net. Our serve receive passers did an outstanding job getting their passes up on the net right from the start. Katie Newell was able to run our offense from where we needed to be. I was very happy with how hard everyone played tonight. They are all excellent teammates!” 

Leaders for Barnesville were Emily Bredman (14 kills,7 blocks), Lexi Bolgrean (6 kills, 11 digs, 6/6 serving), Smith (16/17 serving, 3 aces), Katie Newell (25 set assists, 7 digs, 3 blocks, 6/9 serving, 2 aces), Skogen (13/15 serving, 2 aces, 5 digs) and Kianna Amundson (10/11 serving, 1 ace).