Leaders for the Trojans were Emily Smith (14 kills, 20/20 serving, 1 ace), Emily Riddle (9 kills, 3 solo blocks, 3 block assists), Rumley Biewer (18 set assists, 9/9 serving), Jaida Bontjes (10 set assists), Kenzie Skogen (12/13 serving, 1 ace, 14 digs) and Sydney Strand (18 digs, 10/11 serving, 1 ace).

“We had a bit of a slow start tonight getting things rolling on our side of the net,” reported Coach Askegaard. “The Trojans are led by 11 seniors, 2 juniors, and 2 sophomores rounding out the varsity squad. We came out a little flat tonight, but were able to turn things around when we needed to. Even though we have a strong senior class, we are still lacking a little bit of experience out on the court in a varsity match. We need to be a little more aggressive on the defensive end and then our offense will feed from that.  ADA served us tough and caught us being too timid a couple rotation on serve receive. They were able string together many runs when we needed to side out and get the ball back to our serving line. We fought in the first two sets when we could have just let them take advantage of our mistakes. Set 3 we were able to get more into system with some great serves from Kenadee Gray that really helped to spark our offense and give us a nice lead early in the set. We were able to set our middles when we needed to keep the ball on our side of the net. Rumley, Jaida, and Amelia Newell did a wonderful job finding their middles. Emily Smith and Emily Riddle were a great presence on offense as well as putting up a great block on the net. Volleyball is such a game of momentum, and we were able to keep the momentum on our side and really capitalize on some mistakes made by the Cougars in set 3. We did many things fundamentally well in the 3rd set and were able to push through the set to get the win.  A couple of errors early on in set 4 really hurt us getting things going again on our side. We need to be more aggressive with our first ball and not give them easy points to start the set. We missed 4 serves early on and that really prevented us from getting on the scoreboard early. Great first game to see some great things on the court, but also to give us some skills that we can get right back in the gym to continue to work on and get better each day.”