Lady Dogies having growing pains

Sonja Karp
NLJ Sports Reporter
 
It’s been a bit of a rough start for the Lady Dogies as the squad is adjusting to new players and positions, and last week, hitting and serving errors plagued the team as they went up against the Sundance Lady Bulldogs at their house on Thursday and traveled to Douglas for a quad against Burns, Douglas and Wheatland on Saturday.
“In general, we had a lot of hitting errors last week,” sighed head coach Keeley Anderson. “Serving was better, but it’s still tough to win when you’re giving away points with hitting errors.”
In Sundance, the squad really struggled to get into a groove as a team, dropping the match in three straight sets 12-25, 14-25, and 10-25. 
“It was a rough match, and a total team loss, because we just didn’t come together,” Anderson began. “We had a little meeting the next day that went pretty good. We were all on the same page that we were pretty frustrated that we played like last year when we were a lot less experienced. We’re not that team anymore.”
Anderson gave credit to the Lady Bulldogs team as well. 
“Sundance won [the state tournament] last year and they didn’t have a lot of holes,” she admitted. “If they did they were quick to get there to cover them up.”
Coming off the loss, Newcastle faced the Big Horn Lady Rams first on Saturday in Douglas. Unfortunately, they picked up where they left off on Thursday with a pretty slow start. On a brighter note, however, as the match went on, the squad began to pull things together as evidenced by the score of the sets in the match. Big Horn did take the win, sweeping Newcastle in three straight sets, however the Lady Dogies played progressively better in each, losing 14-25, 21-25 and 22-25. 
“Our serving hurt us in that match, but other than that we looked pretty good,” Anderson declared. “I don’t feel like our record for the day showed the level of the game that we actually played overall.”
The fifth-ranked Douglas Lady Bearcats were second on the docket for Newcastle and the ladies stepped up to face the challenge. 
“It was actually pretty fun to watch, and we were able to beat them in one set, so that was great,” Anderson exclaimed. “It went by in a hurry and we really dominated throughout it. I didn’t use any timeouts, which hasn’t happened so far.” 
Getting to that dominating set took a little time, however. In the first set, Newcastle gave away 20 points in missed serves, missed hits and net violations and giving away that many points in unforced errors makes it impossible to win.
The third set was when the Lady Dogies were able to put together a solid effort picking up the 25-20 win. Douglas rallied to take the win in the fourth set of the match.
The Bearcats’ big 6-foot, 4-inch hitter was moved from the middle to the outside on Saturday, so that gave the Lady Dogies the opportunity to get Tiernan Stanton and Jaylen Ostenson opened up in the middle. The outside hitters also had more opportunities at the net without her there for the double block. 
“Our right side adjusted well, but they were pretty intimidated to have her there blocking them,” Anderson chuckled. “I kept asking Claire [Beastrom] to hit line and she was pretty intimidated, but she did try and that’s all I can ask.” 
“The girls also did pretty well blocking her on the outside and Tiernan did a good job of shutting down her opportunities,” Anderson continued. “We had a joke that there is now another Big Red in town.”
Finally, the team went up against the Wheatland Lady Bulldogs. As the third match of the day, both squads were pretty worn out, but Anderson thought her girls hung in the game pretty well.
“Our setters had run around all day, so they were pretty tired, so it was a little more of a struggle,” she admitted. “Our passers were doing a pretty good job, but the setters had kind of lost their legs by then so it was a little tougher for our hitters then as well.”
Though Wheatland was also a loss for Newcastle, those sets were close — 19-25, 20-25, 19-25 — and Anderson believes that they are definitely a beatable team. 
“It was great for the girls to see that they could contend with those guys and it gave us some things to work on this week,” she nodded. “Our main focus will be serving and hitting as that is something we have been struggling with so far this season. We know we have to cut down on our unforced errors and make teams work for their points instead of giving it to them.”
This week, things start to ramp up for the squad as they head into their first quadrant/conference matches of the year. The Lady Dogies will head to Thermopolis on Thursday and then host Buffalo beginning at 2 p.m. on Saturday afternoon, which will also be the team’s senior recognition for the year.