Sports
Stars earn top spot in District 11
Tyler Ohmann
10/16/2012
The Bottineau Stars captured the top seed for the upcoming District 11 tournament by defeating the Velva Aggies 3-1 in the Stars’ only match this past week.
The Aggies, who were previously unbeaten in district play, traveled into Thursday’s game in Bottineau looking to claim the top spot at the tournament, which they will host beginning Oct. 25.
“Going into distirct play it’s nice to have a win like this,” said senior Katie Gottbreht. “We still have another game left, but it’s nice to have a district win.”
“It was really good, especially with a district place on the line,” Gottbreht added.
The Stars started out the match on the right foot with a 25-16 win in the first set.
“At the beginning of the match we were really good,” Dunrud said. “Passes were right to the setter, she was setting them up and we were making them play defense the whole time.”
Bottineau looked to be on the fast track to victory with another strong set in set two, a 25-21 win.
However, the Aggies did not give up and capitalized on the Stars’ mistakes in the third set and earned a 25-14 win.
Velva kept the pressure on the Stars in the final set, but the Stars closed out the match with a 25-23 victory in set four.
“We started standing up and jumping at the ball a little bit, and I don’t know why, but once we settled back down, I thought we played good again,” Dunrud said.
Dunrud was happy with the victory by the Stars, especially over a tough opponent, and with a lot on the line.
“They hadn’t lost a game in the district, so they had been playing good volleyball,” Dunrud said. “Did we make some mistakes, yeah, and they capitalized on them.”
“It was definitely huge to get that seed, and hopefully make it easy for ourselves,” Dunrud added.
Bottineau got strong performances in the match from senior Katryna Hahn and junior Danielle McDonald. Hahn finished with team-bests in kills (12) and blocks (five), while McDonald had a team-high 14 digs and a strong 10 kills.
“Danielle (McDonald) made some plays for us, especially in that last set, and Karlee (McCloud) had some nice serves for us, and Bailey (Neubauer) had a good night for us too,” Dunrud said. “It was an all around good team win. The girls on the bench were real excited, and that helps too. It picks up the energy level of the girls on the court.”
McCloud was 16-for-17 on serves with an ace on the night, and Neubauer had 33 set assists, eight digs and two aces.
“I’m real proud of the girls, they’ve done a really nice job,” Dunrud said. “We’ve been up and we’ve been down, but they hung on to it and made some plays when they had to.”
Gottbreht is glad that the team has thus far met their preseason expectations.
“With our young team we had hoped we would be in this position,” Gottbreht said. “We set our expectations to be in this position. We didn’t really know how it was going to go, but we were really going to work for it and see what we could do.”
“We’re really satisfied with being No.1 in the district,” Gottbreht continued. “We were having a little rocky road there for a little bit, but we came out on top and hopefully it keeps going like this.”
Along with finishing 6-1 in District 11 play and capturing the top seed for the upcoming tournament, the Stars also earned their 20th win of the season. They now are 20-10 overall this fall.
Gottbreht knows that the road ahead will not be easy, and that the Stars will need to continue fighting.
“Our district is pretty good, Velva is really good, Rugby is good, and our region is really tough,” Gottbreht said. “Kenmare and Our Redeemer’s are pretty tough teams. We have a pretty good region.”
Dunrud is looking forward to the upcoming competition at the district tournament in Velva.
“It is going to be interesting,” Dunrud said of the District 11 tournament. “Velva is a good team when they are hitting the ball, they hustle and it will be at their place the next time if we play them.”
“They’ll have a little bit more of the advantage there, having a little more of a crowd,” Dunrud added.