“To start off our morning we had an extremely hard time getting things going into our style of play against a tough serving Fertile-Betlrami team,” commented Barnesville Head Coach Megan Askegaard. “We found ourselves down early struggling with passing and then putting our 3rd ball over the net. We were trailing early in the set 0-10 before coming up with a side-out when Abby John came up with a kill on the net. We had some ground to make up in the first set, and we just ran out of confidence due to how large our deficit was to start. However, the girls regained their confidence and came back to fight in the second set where they constantly traded points and tied the score with almost each possession. It was fun to see them come out after not having a great start in the first set to really battle it out on the court with the Falcons. Our 2nd and 3rd sets in pool play we really played well together as a team. The girls brought the energy and played for the WE not the ME out on the court. They were having fun and celebrating each play together. In this game, keeping the enthusiasm at a high level and celebrating are really important. These two matches in pool play were fun to watch, play, and coach. The girls really worked well together finding their setters on the net and then putting down some big kills. Our pool had a 3 way tie with FB, NYM, and Barnesville, however due to the tie breaker criteria, FB took the top position with points.” 

Stat leaders for the Trojans were Abby John (35 kills, 4 solo blocks, 1 assisted block), Amelia Newell (54 set assists, 10 digs, 9 aces, 6 kills, 1 solo block), Lexi Hoeft (22 kills, 9 digs), Lydia Braton (10 kills, 2 solo blocks), Macie Pauna (10 kills, 10 digs, 3 solo blocks), Sophie Frederick (26 set assists, 9 digs, 3 aces), Aubryn Hinsz (8 kills) and Kenadee Gray (40 digs, 6 set assists, 1 ace).

“Our final match of the day was for 3rd place against the Frazee Hornets,” reported Coach Askegaard. “They ended up second in their pool behind Breckenridge. You could see that we had a little break in the playing action when we took the court in our first set. We were just one step slow and just not playing like we had been earlier in the morning. We came up short in our first set, but then the girls really battled back in set two to serve them tough and take them out of their playing system. We found our hitters up on the net and moved the ball well to find Lexi and Macie on the outside but to also get the ball back to Aubryn on the right side. Abby had another solid attacking match from the middle to really open things up for us. Amelia and Sophie made some great setting decision during this set to allow us to score points easier against the Hornet defense. Kenadee Gray and Elisabeth did a nice job serving the ball and playing defense in the backcourt to help us stay strong and fight to the finish in the second set. Moving into our only 3rd set for the day we took and early 6-1 lead before the Hornets were able to find a hole in our defense to sid-eout. They came back at us with some tough plays and scored against some touches on our blocks and holes in our backcourt. We were up 12-11 before we came up with a side-out and a big kill on the net from Macie when Lydia went back to the serving line to finish off the set. Today was a big day for us to gain some confidence and play together as a team. We were able to find some success and add a couple more wins to the win column of our record. We travel on Monday night to face a tough WDC team and then home on Tuesday.”