Thunder Women’s Volleyball Drop Two to Vikings
Posted on: Nov 2, 2015
The Women's Volleyball team continued their regular season this past weekend as they played a home and home series versus the Augustana Vikings. In Friday night's affair, the Thunder came out strong and dominated play in every phase of the game, building a 16-5 lead before the Vikings woke up and battled back to force it to a 25-23 victory for the Thunder. After the first set, both teams played some entertaining volleyball and the match went to a fifth and deciding set. In the fifth set the ladies were tied with the Vikings eight all and then could not pass a ball, were outscored 7-1 and lost the match. Set scores for the match were 25-23, 18-25, 25-23, 21-25 and 9-15. Jae-Lyn Visscher was the Player of the Match for the Thunder.
Playing at home on Saturday, the ladies were looking to get in the win column and again came out strong in the first set and won 25-18. After the first set, some old habits came to the fore allowing the Vikings to control the rest of the match with their strong serving and backrow play, taking the next 3 sets 17-25, 17-25 and 14-25. Player of the Match for the Thunder was Tianna Smith who came off the bench and played some strong volleyball.
Coach Turner's had this to say about the weekend: "In both matches, we came out and dictated the play from the first whistle and maintained our focus and desire to succeed throughout the set, and we were rewarded with the set victory. After the first set each night, our backrow play wasn't consistent and we reverted back to the old habits that the ladies feel comfortable with. In this league, those habits will not work and it showed in the way we played. We need to become a tougher team to play against and start to step up to the challenges that we will face each weekend. In order to do that, we need to be more efficient in our drills during practices and stop making the same mistakes twice in a row. We will continue to work on that to make us a tougher team."
The Thunder will now enjoy a bye week to prepare to take on the King's Eagles on November 13th and 14th.
