Lady M’s earn Senior Night victory over Nikiski

• Homer netters to play final home matches Friday and Saturday

by Aaron Selbig
Homer Tribune
After a dominating opening performance against Nikiski last Thursday at home gave the Homer Lady Mariner volleyball team a decisive 25-12 win in the first game, their small but vocal crowd of supporters was probably thinking “easy win.”
Led by seniors Jessie Erickson and Carla Mueller – who were honored with flowers, speeches and hugs all around in a pre-match Senior Night ceremony – the Lady M’s intimidated the Lady Bulldogs in the first game, using superior intensity and firepower at the net to force several Nikiski errors.
In game two, however, the Homer girls let their guard down and started making errors of their own. Nikiski came roaring back, building a 10-2 lead before Head Coach Beth Trowbridge called a timeout.
“The momentum changed quite a bit,” Trowbridge said after the match. “Nikiski is a strong team and I was not surprised they had come back, but we just lost some of our intensity in the second game. I tried to get them thinking about playing solid volleyball again … playing an offensive game instead of just reacting to what the other team is doing.”

After the timeout, it was Mueller’s turn to lead the offense. Using a clever mix of devastating kill shots and gentle tip-overs into the soft spots of the Lady Bulldog defense, Mueller fired up her teammates.
And while they seemed to rise to her level of focus and rally hard to end the second game, Nikiski evened things with a 25-20 win.
Both teams came out motivated in the third, with Nikiski clawing back from an early 3-10 deficit to tie things up at 13. A back-and-forth battle ensued, until the Lady Bulldogs pulled away and took a 2-1 advantage with a 25-21 win.
“The key for our young team is getting everybody on the same page,” Trowbridge said. “When the whole team – and not just one or two people – is putting it into gear at the same time and working as a team, then it tends to go pretty well.”
That’s exactly what happened in the fourth and fifth games, when the Lady Mariners played tenacious defense, communicated their attack and exercised patience in setting up their offense.
After securing a hard-fought 25-21 win in the fourth game, Homer thoroughly outplayed Nikiski in the fifth, winning 15-7 for a tough 3-2 victory overall.
Mueller led the Lady M’s with 12 kills, while Erickson picked up five. Defensively, Erickson registered 22 digs, while Jessica Buckley had 17 and Lauryn Cashman added 13.
Trowbridge said that, although this year’s team has but two seniors, the players are always psyched to get a win on Senior Night.
“I think it motivates them,” she said. “Jessie (Erickson) came out with lots of fire, and Carla (Mueller) definitely dominated. Everybody was just hungry for a win.”
Wins would be hard to come by for Homer netters the rest of the weekend as they traveled to Anchorage for the two-day, 20-team Dimond-Service Tournament.
In round-robin play Friday, the Lady Mariners finished fourth in their five-team bracket, losing to West Anchorage, Service and Lathrop before beating Heritage Christian 25-8, 25-8.
On Saturday, Homer – placed in the “silver” pool – took Eagle River to three games before falling in a close match, 17-25, 26-24 and 13-15.
Another close three-game match against Cordova ended in a loss before Homer rallied to beat Heritage Christian a second time, 25-10 and 25-15.
“That tournament is always stiff competition, but it’s a great experience,” Trowbridge said. “It’s good for our girls to see what volleyball is like at that level.”
The road-weary Lady M’s will play their final games at home this week – against Kenai on Friday and Soldotna on Saturday – before heading to Wasilla on Nov. 6 for the Region III Tournament.

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Posted by Newsroom on Oct 28th, 2009 and filed under Sports. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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