Volleyball team shows competitiveness

Alan Dale Wausa Gazette WAUSA — After a season that came agonizingly close to taking part in a district final, the Wausa volleyball team had quite the competitive opening week to the 2022 campaign.

The Lady Vikings hosted a triangular on Aug. 25 and fell first to the O’Neill St. Mary’s Cardinals (25-16, 25-22) before sweeping past the rival Bloomfield Bees (25-17, 25-15).

“Against St. Mary’s, we battled point for point until the 15th point, but too many unforced errors got us in trouble late in the first set,” Wausa head coach Greg Conn said.

“We were down 15-9 in set two and then rattled off seven straight points to take the lead 16-15. Then it was a battle to the end and St. Mary’s made a couple more plays at the end to secure the set and game.”

Senior Alexa Cunningham (five kills, three blocks), junior Hunter West (four kills), junior Claire Kumm (four blocks), senior Alexis Munter (four blocks), senior Abby Kaiser (seven digs) and junior Sienna West (11 assists) led the way for the Lady Vikings.

“Against Bloomfield, we just plain out-hustled the Bees on the floor, and I don’t mean that lightly,” Conn said. “In fact, I was very impressed with their hustle, and we had to step it up and I was very pleased with how we responded. We served tough and got into a rhythm and kept pressure on their defense.

“Overall, we were very balanced across the stat charts in almost every category. We were down big in the second set against St. Mary’s, and we never gave up and made a great run at them late in the game and so this group has a lot of heart and fight in them.”

Cunningham paced the attack with five kills, Sienna West distributed 15 assists and Kaiser anchored the back with eight digs.

“We did pretty good being our first time playing together,” Hunter West said. “It’s a pretty different team than last year. Our attitudes were high and that kept us up. Even when we were down, we pulled ourselves back together and we’d come back. We kept our spirits up. It was a fun environment to play in.”

Hunter West said she hopes this year could be better than last year.

“The girls have the same goal of getting to state and we are working hard to make that happen,” she said. “We have to work better on serve-receive to make it easier for our setters to run the attack. We just have to be more consistent overall and definitely work on our blocks.”

Conn said despite the even start, there is plenty to work on.

“We have to quit shooting ourselves in the foot as we had too many unforced errors that could have made a difference in that first game,” he said.

“It was the first night out, and overall, we had a lot of positives to take away and we know how much better we can be, and it starts with cutting down on the unforced errors.”

Wausa hosted Neligh-Oakdale on Aug. 30 and will travel for a triangular with Elkhorn Valley and Winside at 5:30 p.m. Sept. 1 at Winside.

“Winside and Elkhorn Valley are very familiar and both teams are very strong fundamentally and just don’t make very many mistakes,” Conn said.

“Elkhorn Valley is tall and will put up big blocks so we will have to speed up our tempo and move the ball around to get one on one with our hitters.

“So, needless to say, our schedule is tough right out of the gate and never lets up.”