Sports

Two Stars emerge with new records

By Tyler Ohmann

11/20/2012

Two Bottineau Stars volleyball players closed out their season last week on good notes by breaking school records.

The Stars not only made it to their third straight Region 6 tournament championship, but senior Katryna Hahn broke the single season kills record, and junior Bailey Neubauer also broke a record by smashing the BHS set-assist record.

First-year Bottineau coach Steve Dunrud said an offensive-minded approach really helped the two Stars to break the records and make the team successful this season.

“I guess I would be considered to be an offensive coach, so we worked a lot on our offense and transitioning from defense to offense,” Dunrud said. “I think we worked a lot on that, and we worked a lot on hitting, so our hitters did a good job on that when they got opportunities.”

“We were very successful in most cases doing that, and the talent was there for the girls, and they did a very nice job,” Dunrud added.

Hahn the heavy-hitter

In 2006 Kelsey Aide had a tremendous season. She set the Bottineau kills record with 379 kills. However, Katryna Hahn, in her third season at varsity this past season did even better.

“Katryna really had a great year, and she was the go-to hitter,” Dunrud said. “She had the ball set to her a lot, but playing middle it takes more than just yourself. We had to pass the ball well at times to let the setter be able to set it to the middle.”

Hahn broke Aide’s record in the Stars’ region title match against Our Redeemer’s Christian School, when she had six kills to finish with 384 for the season.

“I think the whole team was kind of pulling for her to get the record in,” Dunrud said. “We had to play a lot of matches. If we would have lost out a couple games earlier in the regional, we wouldn’t have had the chance to do that.”

A big part of the reason she broke the record according to Dunrud was Hahn’s ability to perform day in and day out.

“She was very consistent,” Dunrud said. “She didn’t really have any bad matches throughout the year, so that was a nice thing to see.”

Hahn played in all 111 of Bottineau’s games this year, and Dunrud said that it was nice to see the senior go out with that kind of honor, especially considering the great hitters that Bottineau has seen in the past.

“That’s a very great honor for her, because there have been some really great hitters that have graduated from Bottineau and played volleyball,” Dunrud said. “It was a really nice milestone for her to achieve.”

New Neubauer

As for junior Bailey Neubauer, her first year as the starting setter for the Stars turned out to be a pretty good one to say the least.

Not only did she have a team-best 89 service aces, but she smashed the recently set, set-assist record.
Neubauer finished with 866 set-assists, which bested the 824 mark set just a year ago by Ashleigh Aufforth.

“It’s really unbelievable that she was able to do that,” Dunrud said. “We had four girls that really did a nice job of hitting and they were able to convert a lot of the chances into kills.”

“I think she set the ball very well for the hitters and got to know where the hitters liked to have the sets,” Dunrud added.

Dunrud credits the whole team in Neubauer’s achievement, but also said that she had some strong nights of her own on the road to breaking the record.

“We had to have a nice passing night to be able to allow her to set it where she needed to,” Dunrud said. “Some nights we made her run a little bit, so she earned some of those assists because of that, but overall it was an outstanding year, because that’s a huge number that she came up with.”

Neubauer too credits her teammates in helping her get there.

“I get really good passes from Rachael, all of our defensive players do,” Neubauer said. “It really counts that our hitters can get kills all the time and that gets me assists, so it’s really all around that helps me.”

Neubauer broke the record in the 3-1 win over Kenmare in the region semifinal match, where she had an impressive 44 set-assists to help push the Stars to victory.

“I knew I was close, but it was really 50/50 if I would get it or not,” Neubauer said. “We just had to play our best the last couple of games.”

Neubauer was happy with how the team played in the region tournament.

“It was really nice beating Kenmare. We wanted to beat them all season,” Neubauer said. “Second in regions isn’t bad, so I’m really proud of how we did.”

But how will the setter follow up the junior year? She just hopes to get better along with her teammates.

“We are going to practice a lot during the summer and just get ready for the season next year, and hopefully we can do better,” Neubauer said.