BROOKVILLE – In the district semi-finals the Versailles Lady Tigers put away the Anna Lady Rockets. The two teams had met much earlier in the season and that result was a 3-1 win for the Lady Tigers. It took some effort but a poised Tiger team fended off the Rockets and even had to come from behind to pull off the win in the second set. It was a hard fought match all in all but the Tigers won in three sets: 25-17, 26-24 and 25-20.
The first set was closely contested a good bit of the way. But with the score tied at 15-all, the Lady Tigers put together a nice little 5-0 run to gain the late momentum. Despite a couple of time outs, the Lady Rockets never did recover. Makenzie Knore, Reagen Shaffer, and Brooke Stonebraker all had kills to finish out the set.
The second set was more closely contested. The score would be tied 12 times in all. At one point though the Tigers were down by 5-points 10-15. After a Versailles time out to get things back in control, Emma George got a kill and was quickly followed by Lindsey Winner who had 2-kills back to back to get the Tigers back on track. The Tigers chipped away and finally tied the set at 20-all. Down the stretch Winner had a couple of kills back to back again and the team eeked out a 26-24 second set win.
“We battled all year when we were in pressure situations like this,” said Versailles coach Kenzie Bruggeman. “You could feel it tonight it was like – hey we can do this, we just need to do one thing at a time. Let’s get a pass and feed it to the front row.”
The last set was a rubber band set where Versailles would open a little lead and Anna would bounce back – make a run and catch up. This happened several times. Anna did make a little run at the end that made the finish interesting, but with the score 23-20, Shaffer got the next 2-points off of kills to end the set and win the match for the Lady Tigers. Also during this set Lindsey Winner did a good job of serving the ball.
“It was a back and forth match, Anna played awesome.” exclaimed Coach Bruggeman, “They stayed so close to us, but I was proud of our girls, they played so even keeled. They did not get rattled, once we got our rhythm and groove we were able to push forward and make a difference.”
She continued, “Freshman Kirsten Bomholt had a good game, she seemed to feed off of the energy of the crowd. In past games she was so technical in her game, tonight she seemed relaxed and was more of an athlete. Lindsey Winner did well from the service line, she had one of our longer runs. She had been doing great since she came back.”
Next Coach Bruggeman was asked about the team getting above .500 and still playing for a district championship. “I told them all along that it was not about wins and losses. It was how we develop as a team. I think this showed tonight. We did not let ourselves get rattled. We got up and stayed consistent. I am proud of how we have grown as a team.”
