Bulldogs’ volleyball season comes to an end
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By Missy Klatt
Sports Correspondent
PHILLIPS — The Lady Bulldogs volleyball squad made the long trek to Phillips on Tuesday, October 22 for the first round of the WIAA Division 3 regional tournament.
According to head coach Keri Peterson, her team was fired up and ready to take on the Loggers despite being the underdogs. Boyceville was seeded 13th while Phillips was ranked fourth.
And a good competitive match it was as the Bulldogs kept things close despite losing the match in three sets; 25-27, 22-25 and 19-25.
“The girls played well as a team and left everything they had on the court tonight,” enthused Peterson. “A couple of mistakes in each set was the difference. It was tough to lose, but I was really proud of the girls’ efforts and play tonight.”
Peterson had all sorts of praise for her players as she went through her stats for the match.
For serving, the team had eight aces for the evening.
“We knew we would need to serve well to get them out-of-system in order to be successful,” remarked Peterson. “We only had four serving errors as a team in three sets on the night. We didn’t want to give them points off our missed serves. I was very happy with our serving tonight. Phillips had many more errors on serving than us and that helped us a bunch.”
Emma Bygd led the Bulldogs in aces with four and also had a couple of scoring runs.
As for their offense, the Lady Dawgs worked hard on speeding up their sets to the outside so that the Logger blockers had a harder time defending them.
Peterson lauded Hannah Johnson’s attack, “She had a great night hitting for us, earning 13 kills. Phillips is known to defend the court well and be scrappy so we tried to do all we could to find the holes and Hannah was successful at that tonight.”
Ella Holden added four kills, Megan Hintzman three and Kady Grambow two.
Peterson added, “We were a little more balanced, using all of our hitters tonight, which was great to see.”
Adding to the offense was Emma Ouellette with 14 assists and Megan Hintzman with four.
Defensively, the Lady Dawgs had a solid night at the net blocking, forcing Phillips to hit over their blockers, hitting the ball out many times during the match. Libby Bygd and Ella Hilden each had three block assists and Libby added another solo block. Chrissa Kersten was the defensive leader in the back row with 12 digs and putting the ball into the setters’ hands. Peterson called her phenomenal. Kady Grambow had nine digs, Emma Bygd seven and Emma Ouellette six.
As for the season as a whole, Coach Peterson recapped, “Our team goal this season was to finish in the top three in conference play. We were close to reaching that goal, losing a close final set against E/PC and a couple of close sets against Spring Valley. Those two are matches we really wanted to win. Our seniors will be missed next year. I’ve sure enjoyed coaching them the past three years and watching them develop as players and young women. Next year, we have a solid group of players returning that gained varsity experience this season and that will be invaluable moving forward.”
Boyceville finished the season with an 8-18 record.