Loud student section fuels team energy in game
RANDOLPH - Randolph saw both sides of the playing coin a week ago as the Lady Cardinals volleyball team followed up an impressive sweep of Neligh Oakdale (25-17, 25-23, 25-16) with a tough 3-0 defeat (25-21, 26-24, 25-14) from rivals Wausa two days later.
“Tuesday was a great night for the Randolph volleyball team,” Randolph head coach Lyndsee English said. “After the players were announced, Bailey Beal and Erin Engel were each presented with a special volleyball from the coaches for their accomplishments they reached earlier this season. Bailey for her 500 career kills and Erin for her 1,000 career set assists.
“The team came out with a lot of energy from the beginning of the game and kept the momentum all night. We had a great crowd and a loud student section, which I feel like helped the girls maintain their high energy level of play.”
Beal (12 kills, three blocks), Engel (27 assists, four aces), Ella Scott (10 digs, three aces), Brianna Sporleder (five kills, three aces) and Jacey Bartels (six kills, five digs) keyed the Randolph (5-7) win.
“Both our serving and our serve receive were excellent,” English said. “When those two areas of our game are on, we are able to compete with any team we are playing because we are able to run our offense more effectively.”
Things were a little different at Wausa.
“It felt like we didn’t have the same energy level as what we played with on Tuesday night,” English said. “We had Taylor Bloomquist out due to illness and Jacey went down in warmups with an ankle injury. We started the game with other girls stepping in and they did well but we got messed up in our rotation once and weren’t able to get the first set.”
Bartels came in during the second set and was able to put down six kills while Beal (11 kills, three blocks), Scott (10 digs) and Engel (25 assists, four kills) led the way.
“This was a disappointing loss for the team after such a great team performance and win,” English said. “Our serve receive was still pretty good on the night but we definitely didn’t serve as well which makes a big difference.
“Wausa is a very aggressive serving team and they took us out of our groove. We are focusing on our blocking, getting it closed, and trying to at least slow the ball down so our defenders have a better chance at digging the ball. We definitely had more attacking and ball handling errors than what we typically have as well.”
Scott admitted that a lot of her team’s play was forced by the aggressiveness of the Lady Vikings and the team’s serve-receive was a little jittery.
“Their serves were probably the most aggressive we’ve seen all year,” Scott said. “We didn’t expect that. We always expect a good game out of Wausa because they are always aggressive or scrappy. We didn’t really have any idea how their serving would be: You just show up and deal with it.”
She also noted the team’s work on the block showed itself at times.
“We have been working on blocking a lot because you can’t expect the backrow to dig all of those kills when we can’t get a touch on the block,” Scott said. “We got a lot of touch on the block and that helped a lot.”
Randolph takes on St. Mary’s at home Thursday and then travels to Elkhorn Valley for an eight-team tournament on Saturday. O’Neill, St. Paul and Archbishop Bergen will be in the Lady Cardinals pool.
“This is always a very competitive day of volleyball, and we have a very tough pool this year,” English said. “We are the only D2 team in this tournament with most of them being C1 or C2. We will need to be ready to play some good volleyball on that Saturday.”
Randolph will then travel to Creighton on Tuesday.
Scott said the team should be fine moving forward.
“They are a really good team and they hit the ball hard for sure,” Scott said. “Teamwise we are pretty even if you get us on a night where everything is where it is supposed to be.”
