Six straight service aces in the third game by Morgan Balder finished off a swift attack from Central Lakes College as the Raiders defeated Itasca 3-0 in the opener of the Northern Division season Wednesday, Sept 4, in Brainerd.
The Raiders won by scores of 25-10, 25-18 and 25-6 to lift their overall season record to 4-3.
Nicole Kortan knocked out seven kills and was followed by Maggi Fellerman and Sydney Berg who collected six. Fifteen digs by Hailey Tihlarik and 10 set assists from Kylie Porter helped to set up the Central Lakes attack.
“We wanted to win the serve-pass game and trying to be good servers and good passers, which we did,” head coach Jane Peterson said. “We didn’t miss a lot of serves and we were serving aggressively most of the time.”
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Along with the digs from Tihlarik, Fellerman knocked back five blocks and the Raiders finished with 10 as a team. It was a part of the game they talked about heading into Wednesday night’s matchup.
“Another thing that we were working on was to play better defense and our block was good and in the right place,” Peterson said. ”We have been working on that. When the pace of the game is slower, we have the ability to get in the right place and that won’t be the case in all of our games.”
This year’s team is 14 players deep and so far in the early part of the season the team has played two games a day and with the three-game sweep on Wednesday night, some of the players were in a position they weren’t accustomed to as Peterson explained.
“We also want to work on our bench and encouraging each other,” she said. “None of these players have experience being on the bench and a lot of them will be spending time there and they need to work on having fun. That is part of the game. I think everyone was engaged and excited for their teammates.”
For more photos, go to https://bit.ly/2lZw0cj .
Itasca 10 18 6
Central Lakes 25 25 25
