BROOKVILLE – The No. 4 seed Versailles Lady Tigers defeated the No. 17 seed Middletown Madison Lady Mohawks 3-0 in Saturday OHSAA D-III tournament play.
The Lady Tigers got off to a slow start to open play before going on to a 25-15 first set win.
“Not just quite executing,” Versailles coach Kenzie Bruggeman said of set one play. “We were too passive in everything that we were doing – our approaches weren’t very strong. We didn’t just have that overall drive and I told them, ‘you need to talk through it, start to have a little more energy and momentum and that will start to change,’ and I felt that with each game that did improve.”
Set No. 2 had Versailles handing the Lady Mohawks a 25-9 loss to go up on Madison 2-0.
“Just finding Lindsey (6’2” Lindsey Winner),” Bruggeman said of set No. 2. “She is still finding how to get herself in a groove from being off for a couple of games. I told her just to simplify things down, find your hard hit and then start moving around. Once she did that – that was just huge.”
“Brooke (6’3” Brooke Stonebraker) again did great today,” continued Bruggeman. “Emma (6’0” Emma George) did great today and Ray (6’1” Raegen Shaffer) and March (5’10” Katelyn Marshal) even found their couple of kills. That just helps us stay a balanced offense.”
The third and final set of the night had the Lady Tigers easily winning the set by a 25-12 score and advance in tournament play.
“Becca (Rebecca Knapke) has just been working her tail off cleaning up her serve and making it more aggressive – finding what is most consistent for her,” Bruggeman noted.
Versailles will next play the Anna Lady Rockets, the No. 6 seed team in a Wednesday night match at Brookville High School, October 23 with a 6 p.m. start time.
Anna stayed alive in tournament play with a 3-0 win over the No. 14 seed Greenon Lady Knights 25-16, 25-21 and 25-13, a team Versailles defeated earlier in the season 3-1.
“Anna is a team that runs a very quick offense and that is something that we have been practicing for a couple of weeks now,” said Coach Bruggeman. “We had a pretty good inkling it would be who we would face if we continued to win.”
“The biggest thing is going to be what is on our side, how aggressive we serve, how efficient we are with our offense,” Bruggeman concluded. “That will be the determining factor.”
