Lady Dogies nab conference win over Wolves
The Lady Dogie Volleyball team had mixed results from their two competitions last week. Head coach Mickey Crabtree’s squad suffered a three-set defeat at the hands of the second-ranked 1A Lady Bobcats in Upton on Thursday, but got the win that matters on Friday when they defeated Moorcroft in three sets for the fourth time this season, and for the second time in conference competition.
The Lady Dogies started off in what has become the trend, with a slow first set, dropping it 6-25 against the Lady Bobcats. They ramped things up in the second and third sets to give Upton a bit more of a fight, but still fell 16-25 and 10-25.
“We need to find a way to start a little stronger, but I do like that we can rally back and fight a little harder in the remaining sets,” Crabtree said. “Upton had one really big middle hitter and one girl that played all the way around who did some damage, and they also had a tall front line for blocking, which gave us some problems.”
Crabtree explained that the team implemented what they call “pushes” for the middle hitters this past week. What that means is that the setter pushes the ball just a little off the middle of the net for those hitters in order to position them in a way to get around the double block at the center of the net.
“We really had to put that into action against the Bobcats, because they were really working that double block hard and were almost halfway to the elbow above the net,” Crabtree explained. “We knew we couldn’t power our way through that, so a positive to be taken from the game was that we got to work on that, so that was good.”
On Friday, Newcastle hosted Moorcroft for their senior night game. Once again, the Lady Dogies started slow in the first set. After looking good at the beginning by going up six or seven points, the Lady Wolves rallied back to push the set into extra points. Fortunately, Newcastle was able to stay in the game and prevail 28-26, taking the lead into the second set of the night.
“We like the roller coaster,” Crabtree chuckled. “We tend to get stuck in rotations where our setters are pushed up on the outside and they have to run all the way across the court. We lose three to five points each time, so that’s one of our weaknesses right now.”
Against Moorcroft, the Lady Dogies sent the heat and racked up 11 aces on the night. Those quick points gave Newcastle great momentum through the second and third sets in which they easily defeated the Lady Wolves, 25-11 and 25-16.
“One big thing that I noticed is that our serves make a tremendous difference,” Crabtree insisted. “When we are aggressive and we can get a couple of aces, that really has an impact on our game.”
Adalyn Olson led the team with four aces, Syd Pederson had three while Kenz Rose and Delainey Dresen had two aces each.
One drawback of being more aggressive on the service line is that accuracy is a little diminished. However, on Friday Crabtree’s crew made more points than they lost from their elevated serving techniques.
Defense also looked good for Newcastle as there were several times when it looked as though the ball was going to hit the floor, and then a great hustle move by a Lady Dogie popped it up and kept it in play.
“Our defense is getting better and becoming more consistent, so that is on the rise for us,” Crabtree explained. “But heading into this week and next, we really need to step up our aggressiveness at the net and continue to get after it on the service line.”
This week, the Lady Dogies will wrap up their regular season with two Northeast Quadrant match-ups. They will travel to Glenrock for a rematch against the Lady Herders on Friday, then will host the No. 1-ranked Lady Bison of Buffalo on Saturday. There will be an extra contest on Saturday with a freshman B team starting things off at 10 a.m., then the freshmen, JV and varsity games will follow at 11, 12 and 1 p.m.
