The Vikings came out with great effort on the defensive end with setter Ellie Welch making some huge first plays.  “Senior Marie Backstrom hit the ball very well to start us off tonight and freshman Ari Hovland made some huge improvements on the defensive end and played very confident for us tonight,” said Coach Isaman.  We knew they would pick on Hovland on the service line and at the net and she responded extremely well. The Vikings had a great back and forth set with the Yellowjackets but a few missed blocks hurt us.  We made a few blocking adjustments in the second set and senior Ellie Welch started to give us some great block touches to slow down their power hitters.  This helped our defensive specialists Morgan Korf and Claudia Gurath do their job and we started to execute our offense at a higher level.  Junior Anna Roisum tried to speed up the offense and had a few big kills for us in this set. Junior Zayla Arrow also contributed a few big kills on the right side and Morgan Korf, Claudia Gurath , and Ari Hovland did a great job passing the ball for us to keep our offensive in system.  We had great leadership in this set by our setters Ellie Welch and Anna Roisum to move the ball around and stay aggressive out of system.  Ellie Welch also had a nice run at the service line to tie the set against the Yellowjackets, however, Perham had a 5 point run of their own with a few ball control mistakes on our end and ending up pulling out a close win. In the third set, the Vikings struggled to get much going starting with too many errors.  Our blockers were having a tough time closing the block and Perham's outside hitters took advantage of the opportunity. The Vikings could not get any offensive runs going but tried to hang on defensively as best they could.”

Stat leaders for Pelican Rapids were Welch (9 assists, 4 kills, 2 aces, 2 digs), Roisum (4 assists, 1 ace, 6 kills, 3 digs), Backstrom (7 kills, 5 digs), Korf (14 digs) and Gurath (12 digs).  Zayla Arrow added 2 kills and 1 assist.

“Even though this was a tough loss for the Vikings, as it was our first 3 set loss of the season, I was really proud of how the girls played sets 1-2,” said Coach Isaman.  “We made big improvements from Tuesday and we had several girls really step up in their roles when called upon against one of the best teams in the conference and section.  The Vikings are looking forward to a slower schedule next week with only one conference game so we have some time to rest and refocus for the October stretch.”