Sports

Young Stars hope to reload

By Matthew Semisch

08/26/2014

Looking at the 25-8 record and Class B District 11 title that the Bottineau High volleyball team posted in 2013, it’s easy to imagine that Stars head coach Steve Dunrud is hoping for some carryover into this year.

However much there will be, though, won’t come from the bulk of last year’s lineup.

Of the eight players that got regular playing time on Bottineau’s varsity squad last season, five have since graduated.

The Stars’ 2013 season ended on Nov. 11 with a 3-1 loss to Des Lacs-Burlington (DLB) in the opening round of the Class B Region 6 tournament. That match was the final one in purple and white for a now departed quintet made up of Danielle McDonald, Courtney Gallagher, Bailey Neubauer, Rachael Fix and Karlee McCloud.

“We did lose five seniors to graduation, but no matter who they are, when you’re losing five of the eight or nine girls that played varsity last year, that really cuts into your depth,” Dunrud said.

“They had a lot of experience, and pretty much all of those girls were two-year starters. That’s one of the goals for this year: To replace what we had last year that had been there before.”

Two of those five seniors from last year will be particularly big losses. Neubauer and McDonald were both named as selections to the 2013 Region 6 all-region team.

Another of Bottineau’s key players from last year, now-senior Stephanie Brenden, is finding herself this year moving to a different position. She used to patrol the middle of the court, but Dunrud has asked that she move to outside hitter.

Dunrud expects that Brenden, alongside fellow senior Kennedy Olson, will lead this year’s team.

“We’re looking for good years from Stephanie and Kennedy,” Dunrud said. “Because they’ve got good experience playing in the front row and have shown they can succeed there and set the tone for everyone else.

“Stephanie’s moving to the outside from the middle, and she was good in the middle but we need her on the outside. We’re looking for good seasons from both of them, though, and we hope that they’re able to lead us by example,” he continued.

“I think they’re fired up for the year, and they’ll have the rest of the team set to go, too.”

Other upperclassmen to keep an eye out for this season, Dunrud said, are juniors Shelby Grenier and Skyler Patterson. The Stars could have had another experienced junior this year in the form of Kaytlyn Aufforth, but she is not on Bottineau’s 2014 roster.

Much of the rest of this year’s varsity squad has not played at that level before. They’ve played at the junior varsity level with mixed results, but Dunrud hopes that the younger players can step up quickly as they enter a grander stage than what they were at previously.

“A lot of the girls on varsity this year played JV last year,” Dunrud said. “At that JV level for us, they as a team could be pretty inconsistent where they would play well one night and then on another play pretty poor.

“The goal is to quickly acclimate those younger girls to the level they’ll be playing at now. We need to play fast volleyball so we’re trying to get the girls to realize that, and we need do the right things consistently.”

The Stars open their 2014 season next week with two road trips in three days. Bottineau heads to DLB on Tuesday before visiting Mohall-Lansford-Sherwood (MLS) on Thursday.

Bottineau then hosts its own 12-team invitational tournament next Saturday. The Stars will start out the competition with round-robin pool play against Surrey and Velva.

Dunrud hopes that the Stars can use that tournament and the visits to DLB and MLS to get the ball rolling for the new season. If the Stars can get into good habits early and get better gradually as the season goes on, their head coach said, they could again be a force to be reckoned with in District 11 and beyond.

“Hopefully when district play comes around, we’ll be playing good volleyball and that we can be near the top of the districtfor the regular season and then have a good tournament and make it to regionals,” Dunrud said. “But the road to that point starts now with what your team’s doing in the first week or two of practice, and if we can improve a little each day, we’ll be fine.

“If we can get a little better every day and communicate out on the court that little bit better every day as we go along, we could be playing some really good volleyball there as we approach the end of the year.”