By Nick Beversdorf
Reporter
Merrill volleyball won their second-to-last conference match up last night, handily defeating Wisconsin Rapids-Lincoln in three quick sets: 25-5, 25-10, 25-10. Rapids gained some momentum in sets two and three, but Merrill mostly controlled the whole match, never letting Rapids score more than couple points at a time.
On top of Merrill’s standard star hitters and servers, almost all of the varsity team put up impressive numbers for the match. Morgan Wardall led in both hitting and servers. She had 14 kills and two errors out of 21 attempts along with six aces and one error out of 20 serve attempts.
Many other players got a chance to send kills over the net; Katie Zelinski had seven kills and one error out of 10 attempts and Megan Schroeder had five kills and four errors out of 14 attempts. Kaylee Bowe and Elizabeth Iribarren both had four kills and both Maddix Bonnell and Kelsie Belfiori had two kills.
Belfiori also had a good day serving, sending over five aces out of 16 attempts, error free. Kate Peterson had three aces out of seven attempts, error free and Bonnell, Zelinski and Madisen Weix all had one ace each.
Libero Taylor Cichy also had an excellent day passing. She had 10 perfect passes and five good passes with just one okay pass and one incomplete.
In addition to the match, it was Senior’s Night, with Seniors Casie Blake, Katie Zelinski, and Taylor Cichy recognized before the game, and it was also “Volley for a Cure” with the players, students, and parents all decked out in pink attire for breast cancer awareness.
“Tonight was Sr. Night, Pink Night – Volley for the Cure, and our last home match of the regular season so there were a lot of distractions,” comments head coach Kris Krug. “However, we performed at the level that I was hoping for.
“We missed only one serve in three sets and yet we were serving aggressively. I wanted this match to be about gaining confidence in our underclassmen and cleaning up some of our weaknesses. I believe we accomplished that and we are ready to head into the show down with DC Everest this Thursday.”
The lady Jays will have their work cut for them as they will face the undefeated (and only conference team to defeat them) Evergreens on Thursday, 7 p.m. at Everest.
For full stats, click here.
