Sports

Stars fight through illness

By Matthew Semisch

10/14/2014

The Bottineau High School volleyball team was made to overcome several obstacles last week both on and off the court.

Several Stars players had fallen ill with a bug that has recently been making the rounds in Bottineau, and the team suffered in part for it. BHS faced two District 11 rivals last week and lost to both.

The week started on Tuesday when the Stars fell in five matches to Sawyer. Bottineau held a 2-1 lead after three sets, but the Flashes fought all the way back and won the match (25-13, 17-25, 18-25, 25-22, 25-19).

The Stars then hosted Rugby on Thursday but fell once again, this time by a 3-1 count. Bottineau won the opening set 25-22, but unforced errors the rest of the way cost the Stars as they lost the next three sets 25-12, 25-22 and 25-11.

“We’ve got to stop making unforced errors,” BHS head coach Steve Dunrud said after Thursday’s match with the Panthers. “We give away too many points, and part of it’s from not paying attention to detail.

“It’s fundamental things that we need to understand that are very important in order for us to be successful, and sometimes we aren’t doing a good job of that. The effort was there and the girls played hard, but we had too many unforced errors in two of those sets, and that cost us.”

Following the loss to Rugby, Bottineau took part in the Rolla Invitational tournament on Saturday. The Stars finished the tourney with a 3-2 record, beating Minto, Surrey and St. John before falling to both Rolla and intra-county rival Newburg-Westhope.

Bottineau is much less busy this week. The Stars host Velva on Tuesday night in BHS’s penultimate home match of the 2014 regular season.