Huskies defeat Vikings, 3-1, in TOIE volleyball action

By John Burbridge sports@charlescitypress.com

NASHUA — The Nashua-Plainfield Huskies are — on average — not a tall volleyball team.

“But our girls have pretty good vertical leaps, and we’re good at mixing up our hits,” N-P coach Amber Carter said.

That helps, because they’re not going to lower the net for the Huskies.

They’re also not going to raise the roof for the Northwood-Kensett Vikings, or at least not the one that shelters Nashua-Plainfield’s gym anytime soon. And that proved to be troublesome for the Vikings during their Top of Iowa-East Conference match against the hosting Huskies on Tuesday.

Throughout the match, N-K digs and bumps off hard serves and hits by the Huskies ended up bounding high and deflecting off the gym’s ceiling beams and lighting fixtures.

While the Vikings were having great difficulties playing deflections off the roof, the Huskies were hampered by a slippery floor.

“It was sweat from the girls from when they were diving on the floor,” said Carter, whose team won their second TOIE conference match in as many tries defeating N-K in four games — 25-17, 19-25, 25-12, 25-22.

“Overall, I’m proud of the effort,” said Carter, whose team improved to 2-1 overall and 2-0 in conference play.

The Huskies went up 6-3 in the first game on a kill by Liberty Fisher, but the Vikings soon tied it at 12 with an ace by Laura Hopperstad.

An ace by Brianna Bienemann put the Huskies up 14-12 before a Katelyn White-to-Sydney Hansen kill extended the lead to 18-14

Consecutive aces by Meghan Wright put N-P up 22-15 shortly before finishing the first game.

In the second game, two aces by Dusti Bratrud put the Vikings up 6-0. The Huskies were able to rally to get within 2 at several points during the game, but three service errors after three side-outs thwarted the comeback effort.

Kills by Britney Holthaus and Fisher, and two aces by Shaylee Hansen helped put the Huskies up 10-6 in the third game. Soon after, Bienemann served up an ace right in the middle of the N-K’s side of the court that somehow landed at least five-feet away from any Viking defender making the score 18-9 before the Huskies cruised to go up 2 games to 1.

In the fourth game, the Huskies went up 8-2 on Fisher’s kill before the Vikings rallied back to go up 13-11 on an ace by Hopperstad.

Two aces by Shaylee Hansen regained the lead (17-16) for the Huskies before a Makenna Nelson kill with Fisher assisting increased the advantage to 4 (22-18).

Two kills by Morgan Kapping, and another by Shaylee Hansen helped close out the match.

The Huskies are already well on their way of eclipsing last season’s match win total as they went 5-20 in 2016 in Carter’s first year as head coach.

“It was a learning experience for me, but we were also a young team that lost six seniors,” Carter said. “From last year, we only lost one senior (Sierra Fisher). That was a big loss, but the girls who have returned have been playing together for some time.

“We have great chemistry on this team.”

Before last year, the Huskies had strung together three conference titles.

“Osage is going to be a tough team to beat for conference,” Carter said, “but this team has a lot of potential.”