Barnesville was led by Abby John (19 kills, 4 solo blocks, 3 block assists), Lexi Hoeft (10 kills, 14/14 serving, 4 aces, 20 digs, 2 solo blocks), Paige Braton (8 kills, 1 block assist), Aubryn Hinsz (6 kills, 14/15 serving, 6 digs, 1 solo block), Lydia Braton (4 kills, 12/13 serving, 2 aces, 2 block assists), Amelia Newell (31 set assists, 23/24 serving, 3 aces, 5 digs), Kenadee Gray (22 digs), Elizabeth Mulcahy (13 digs, 29/29 serving, 1 ace) and Sophie Frederick (11 set assists).

Here is Coach Askegaard’s match recap.

In the first couple sets tonight we made too many 3rd ball errors. We allowed the Panthers to attack too much and didn’t come out swinging and placing the ball in their backcourt. We started out slow and then battled back and forth with them in sets 1 and 2, but they were just too much for us to pull through and get. The girls rallied in set 3 with a couple changes in our rotation. We served them tough and made them play out of system for the majority of the set. We were smart with our 3rd contacts and made the Panthers play defense. Defensively we picked up many more balls in the backcourt than we had been previously. We made some great team hustle plays and didn’t let the ball fall on our side. It was fun to see us take the lead in this 3rd set and then work to keep it all the way to 25. 

Moving into set 4 we were a little flat footed and didn’t meet the ball well on serve receive. Our setters were able to establish our middles in this set and made sure that they were finding their big hitters up in the front row. Amelia, Aubryn, and Elisabeth had some great serving runs in this set and that really helped us stretch our lead and push us closer to 25. Kenadee dug up a ton of balls in the left back spot and moved us nicely into our offense. 

Set 5 for the night started off with WAY too many errors in our serve receive. Trojans took a TO when we were down 0-6 from errors on our side of the net. The girls really battled to make up for the lost ground at the start of the set, however in a short set to 15, it is really hard to not make any more mistakes when every point is on the line. We were right there at 7-9 and then again 11-13 after a couple big kills at the net and an ace serve from Hoeft. The set ended with an error in our defense and the Panthers coming out on top. 

Tonight we saw some great defensive plays in the backcourt that really sparked our offense. We need to keep working hard and eliminate our 3rd ball mistakes when we just need the ball in the court and not taking points away from us. Tonight I felt like we just made too many errors that we could have used better ball control to just keep the ball in the court and make the Panthers play some defense. We served the ball very well tonight and really worked the serve receive of the Panthers.