News

The Women's Volleyball team continued regular season play over the weekend as they played a very experienced Lakeland College Rustlers team and went down to defeat both nights. In Friday night's affair on the road, the Thunder struggled with their first contact in all aspects of the game and could not get any rhythm on the court which showed in the scores. Set scores for the match were 25-12, 25-13 and 25-19. Dayna Starke was selected as the Player of the Match for the team.
In Saturday's match at home, the ladies played with a little more fight and determination but when the Rustlers applied some pressure, the team did not respond the right way and could not sustain the energy that was on the court early in the match, losing in straight sets 25-23, 25-16 and 25-16. Tierra Pitt was selected as the Player of the Match for her strong play in the backrow. Coach Trever Turner had this to say after the weekend: "We had some strong individual play over the weekend as Dayna Starke played well in her front row play both nights and Tierra Pitt did a great job on Saturday controlling the backrow and continuing to develop as a strong Libero. However – at this level – in order to be successful you need to play strong as a team and we are still struggling with that. We are giving up too many free points each night and the ladies need to become tougher mentally and do a better job of maintaining their focus when they are on the court. This league is the strongest conference in Canada and there are no plays that you can take off. We need to bring the energy that we had on the court early in the match on Saturday and sustain it for a full week of practice if we want to get to the next level."
The Thunder will get that chance right away this week as they look to get some traction against the Augustana Vikings.  The ladies head to Camrose on Friday night before returning to the Ralph King Athletic Centre for the rematch on Saturday night.  The first serve goes at 6 PM.