ARCANUM – The Versailles Lady Tigers playing in the Midwest Athletic Conference (MAC) and OHSAA 2013, 2017 and 2018 Volleyball State Champions traveled to Arcanum to take on Arcanum Lady Trojans in a Saturday non-conference volleyball matchup.
“When you have a season like ours and play against the opponents that we have it is really easy to get down and not think you are making improvements,” said Versailles coach, Kenzie Bruggeman, “but then you get later in the season and you keep seeing those little improvements day after day, game after game they really will turn it on”
The Lady Tigers brought a 4-10 record into the match and left with a 5-10 record after defeating the Lady Trojans in straight sets. Arcanum entered the day with a 8-5 record playing in the Cross County Conference.
“They are a great team,” said Arcanum coach Macey O’Dell. “We didn’t come out ready to play.”
Versailles opened play executing every phase of their game with a convincing 25-6 first set win and kept up the pressure on the Lady Trojans keeping the home team in single digits with a second set 25-9 win.
“I told them from the beginning, we have to serve aggressive and just stay hungry at the net,” Bruggeman said. “We have been telling them all season that we have a lot of girls on the team that can have five or six kills a game. We don’t always have to rely on Emma George, we don’t always have to rely on Kirsten (Bomholt), we can mix up our offense and still be efficient so that was fun to see today.”
“We talked about it in the lockerroom,” O’Dell said. “We have to come out and be ready to play from point one if we want to play with these big teams.”
Arcanum stepped up play in the third and final set only to fall to the visitors 25-19 to give the Lady Tigers a 3-0 victory.
“Our defense goes unnoticed,” Bruggeman state. “That’s where most of our experience is. When we don’t have that block we still have people that are reading the ball accuratly and still able to keep it off the floor, so they do a ton for us as well.”
With the regular season winding down, teams are looking to the season ending OHSAA tournament.
“We are starting to think a little bit more about tournament,” said Coach Bruggeman. “We are constantly focusing on our side and how we can get better and what we can take from today and move forward is what we need to work on – a little bit more on our hitting execution and that way we can continue to execute our game plan
Jenna Marshal paced Versailles with 9 kills and Emma George accounted for 8 Lady Tigers kills.
