EM volleyball nets .500 record in first two weeks of play

By Cara L. Dempski

The Elk Mound volleyball team picked up its first two wins of the season at this year’s Menomonie Sprawl.

The tournament, held at UW-Stout August 25 and 26, featured teams from all over Wisconsin seeking experience as they head into the 2017 regular season. 

Sam Stelter’s Mounders picked up their first win after sweeping North Crawford in straight sets Friday evening.

The Elk Mound ladies then nabbed their second win Saturday morning, going 2-0 over Chippewa Falls before falling to Athens and Ellsworth in two sets each.

The Lady Mounders had a few days off before hosting a quad featuring Blair-Taylor, Greenwood and Plum City August 29. The home team blanked all three visitors to go 3-0 on the night.

Elk Mound is now 5-5 overall as it hosts one more home quad September 7 before heading to a tournament at McDonell Central September 9.

Menomonie Sprawl

The Mounders added a pair of Ws to their win-loss column at UW-Stout’s Sprawl August 25 and 26 after besting North Crawford Friday evening and Chippewa Falls the following morning.

Elk Mound then dropped the following two matches to Athens and Ellsworth.

The Lady Mounders blasted past North Crawford High School’s Trojans, sweeping the match with 25-16 and 25-14 set wins to take some momentum into the meeting with Chippewa Falls the following morning.

The Cardinals posed more of a challenge for Elk Mound, but the orange and black came out on top with straight-set wins of 25-19 and 25-22. The next team up, Athens, took care of the Mounders in two, but the Mounders still put up a fight.

The 25-18 and 25-19 losses to the Blue Jays left the Elk Mound squad with just the Ellsworth Panthers to play. The Mounders appeared to have put up a fight in the first set, losing by just five,  25-20, but fell behind in the second to drop that one – and the match – after a 25-13 loss.

Junior Morgan Radtke led the offense with 34 kills and five aces. Senior Kourtney Zurbuchen logged 24 kills, Allie Weber picked up 10 kills and four aces, Madysen Borofka earned five kills and a trio of aces, Kortnee Halgren took credit for a pair each of aces and kills, Hailey Blaskowski logged four aces, Cassidy Yakesh drilled in four kills, and Kyla Egan landed a kill.

Alex Jenson provided 31 digs to lead the team defense, with Halgren and Borofka not far behind with 23 and 22 respectively. Weber and Radtke tied with 19 digs apiece, Blaskowski recorded 13, Yakesh accounted for seven, Zurbuchen took four, and Emily Bartig is credited with two.

Borofka led the team in scoring assists with 56 on the weekend.

As noted in last week’s Elk Mound volleyball article, the Mounders also dropped matches to Menomonie, River Valley and Osceola in Friday’s Sprawl competition.

Elk Mound quad

Stelter and her coaching staff did not discuss the skills and deficiencies their opponents would bring to Elk Mound in the days leading up to the August 29 quad at home. They focused instead on taking immediate control of each match.

“We talked about setting the tone of each game, and each match, from the very first point,” Stelter explained. “And the girls did. They played a complete night of volleyball going 2-0 on all three matches, and they did it playing aggressively the whole time.”

The Mounder head coach expressed pride in how her team rebounded from a 2-5 record at the Sprawl to hit .500 overall with the trio of home wins.

Elk Mound took on Blair Taylor to start the evening, and felled the Wildcats 25-16 in the first game before earning a 25-13 win in the second for the match victory. The Mounders then met Greenwood, where they chalked up a 25-15 win in the first and 25-14 win in the second to record a W in the match.

The final team the Lady Mounders faced for the quad was Dunn-St. Croix foe Plum City. Elk Mound got its first look at the Blue Devils and came away with 25-13 victories in both games to sweep the quad 3-0.

Radtke led the Mounder offense with 21 kills and three aces in the game. Yakesh accounted for 14 kills, Zurbuchen logged 13, and Weber recorded 12.

Borofka reeled in a trio of kills while setting up 39 scoring opportunities for her teammates. The senior also chalked up five aces. Kyla Egan logged five kills, and Kortnee Halgren was good for five kills and a pair of aces. Sophie Cedarblade, a sophomore, accounted for a kill.

Blaskowski led the team with eight service aces. Emily Bartig was good for three, and Alex Jenson logged two scoring serves.

Jenson also led the team defense with 31 digs. Radtke tallied 15, Halgren and Borofka 12 each, and Weber accounted for 11. Emily Bartig logged eight digs, Yakesh picked up 5, Zurbuchen and Egan combined for eight, and Cedarblade earned two.