Sports

Eagles get first district victory

By Tyler Ohmann

09/24/2013

The Newburg-Westhope (NW) Eagles earned their first district win of the season this past week as they downed the Dunseith Dragons on the road.

NW started off the match strongly as they were able to get 25-13 and 25-18 wins in the first two sets.

However, in the third set the Eagles serves starting sailing out and the Dragons found some rhythm and forced a fourth set with a 25-20 win.

The Eagles closed out the win in that fourth set though with a 25-19 win.

“They played great, except for that little hiccup in that third game,” Eagles coach Katie Fluhrer said.

It was the second time that the Eagles have beaten the Dragons. They took down the Dunseith in pool play at the Glenburn Invite on Sept. 14.

Senior Ashlyn Huber, who finished with 20 digs and a team-best six aces, thought it was one of the strongest efforts the Eagles have had all season.

“It was probably the best that we’ve played in all our games,” Huber said.

Other leaders for the Eagles included juniors Lauren Mach (11 kills, 18 digs, seven blocks), Maddy Lodoen  (26 digs, three blocks, four aces), Molly Lodoen (23 assists, 11 digs) and Lexi Wyman (22 digs).

NW believes the success stems from practice, where the Eagles went back to the basics after not winning a match in the Bottineau Early Bird Tournament on Sept. 7.

“I definitely think it helped to start right back from the beginning,” Fluhrer said. “I think that’s what we needed to do at that point, and it has seemed like it has helped us.”

Huber agreed that the practice helped fuel them.

“We’ve spent a lot of time in practice basically just passing and working on that,” Huber said. “I think that has helped us improve a lot.”

One thing that the both Fluhrer and Huber agreed is that work from the service line needs to improve. Trouble there is what helped the Dragons take the third set.

“(We’re) definitely going to have to work on it, because serving is usually one of our strong points,” Fluhrer said. “Today didn’t quite show that, so we’re going to have to concentrate a little more on getting it over than on where we are putting it.”

Huber thought that the inaccuracy came from being tired.

“We just can’t get tired, because when we get tired not a lot go in,” Huber said. “We just have to work on not being tired when we’re playing.”

NW improved to 4-8 overall on the season and 1-0 in District 11 play.

Up next for the Eagles is a match at 7:15 p.m. tonight in Newburg against Bottineau.  

Huber knows it will be a tough battle with the 6-4 Stars.

“We have Bottineau next, and they’re a pretty good team, so we’ll have to work pretty hard to compete with them,” Huber said.
Fluhrer offered a little of what the Eagles will have to do to try and stop Bottineau’s strong hitting.

“We just have to concentrate on their hitters, maybe look at some double blocking,” Fluhrer said. “We just have to really concentrate on getting our serves in and no more three balls.”

It is the only match for the Eagles this week.