Netters hot and cold during first weekend

Sonja Karp
NLJ Sports Editor
 
The Lady Dogies served up their opening season tournament Friday and Saturday in Douglas, and on day one seemed to shake off last season’s tendency to start slow, however on Saturday, it seemed as though that old monkey had climbed back on the team’s collective backs.
“Friday was fun because usually we are the team that starts slow and then has to play catch-up,” head coach Keeley Anderson began. “We had a moment of that, but then we really turned it on. Unfortunately, we just seemed a little bit off on Saturday, which hurt us.”
The Lady Dogies hit the court against the 2A Moorcroft Lady Wolves on Friday afternoon, and lost a fierce battle in the first set 24-26 but then rallied and rolled over their opponent 25-13 to push it to a third set where they prevailed 15-11.
“We started a little slow in our first set, but we turned things around pretty quickly,” Anderson described. “We’ve been working on a lot of different things in practice like swing blocks and slowing down our approaches and waiting for the ball. We got into the game setting and our nervous energy kicked in, but they did a good job of reeling things in and applying those things they learned, which was great to see.”
Next up for the Lady Dogies were the Wright Lady Panthers. After several years of being a powerhouse in the 2A ranks, the Panthers are down a bit this season and Newcastle took advantage of that to sweep the squad in two sets with scores of 25-13 and 25-19.
The final match of the day had the Lady Dogies pitted against their first 3A East competition of the day. The Lady Bulldogs of Wheatland, whom Anderson identified last week as being a team to watch this season, showed up without two of their starters who had not completed the requisite 10 practices in order to compete. 
Newcastle had to battle the Lady Bulldogs to win the first set 27-25, but then finished them off in the second set 25-18.
“You could really see on the girls’ faces that they were having a great time and had the kind of confidence they needed to get the win,” Anderson nodded. “They were communicating and really connecting which was great to see.”
The victories on the day set the Lady Dogies up with a No. 2 seed heading into Gold bracket play on Saturday morning. As such, they took on the No. 7-seeded Big Horn Lady Rams bright and early in the 9 a.m. match.
Unfortunately, the team that went undefeated on Friday just didn’t seem to show up on Saturday. The Lady Dogies fought for a 29-27 win in the first set, but then lost the second 20-25 and the third 10-15.
“We could have beat them,” Anderson sighed. “We just weren’t putting up the net play that we are capable of doing. The blocks just weren’t there, we weren’t helping the back row out at all. Our back row also seemed to be a step slow because they weren’t hitting the floor and just weren’t moving their feet the way they needed to.”
The loss put the squad up against the Burns Lady Broncs, also a 3A East Conference team. 
“Our goal was to get in their best player’s head because when she gets flustered, the team tends to follow,” Anderson began. “We were able to slow them down, but again, we were just a little off our game. We played well, and I think we are more than capable of beating them, but things just weren’t clicking.”
The match went to three sets with Newcastle losing the first 22-25, coming back to win the second 25-21, and dropping the third 12-15.
Once again, the Lady Dogies found themselves up against Wheatland for the last contest of the day and the tournament. The Lady Bulldogs had their two starters back for this match, and though they didn’t really bring anything unexpected to their game, by that point Anderson believes that her squad was maybe a little affected by coming off a day of winning only to follow that up with two consecutive losses.
By the final game of the first weekend of tournament play, all teams were feeling the fatigue. Again, the squad didn’t play poorly, but their tanks were low which impacted the effectiveness of their play.
 “There’s always been a rivalry between this particular group of girls all the way back to middle school,” Anderson explained. “Wheatland didn’t like that we swept them on Friday, so they came back with a vengeance when we met up again on Saturday.”
The Lady Bulldogs evened the score, defeating the Lady Dogies in two straight sets, 25-19 and 25-18.
“I don’t know what happened,” began Gabby McVay. “We do this thing where we get up 10 points and then we let them back in.”
“Yeah, we kind of beat ourselves,” MacKenzie Conzelman admitted. “We played great on Friday, but then we just made too many mistakes on Saturday.”
Jaylen Ostenson, Tiernan Stanton and Conzelman led the team with kills over the course of the tournament racking up 48, 40, and 26, respectively. Hunter McFarland finished with 69 set assists while Ostenson contributed 45 and Shelby Tidyman led the team with 18 ace serves and McFarland was close behind with 14.
“I can’t pick one player to highlight because everyone just had a pretty great weekend,” Anderson said. “Tiernen had her big hits and Jay and Hunter as setters did a great job and had some pretty powerful hits from the outside as well.” 
Next week is another two-day tournament for the team in Gillette. On Friday, they will kick off pool play against Campbell County, then will take on Douglas who did not fare well at their tournament last weekend, and finish off the day with Sundance.