For The Tribune
Trinity Lutheran’s volleyball team posted a record of 1-2, while Crothersville dropped all three of its matches Saturday at the Trinity Lutheran Invitational in the Bollinger Athletic Complex.
The Cougars’ win came against the Tigers 25-15, 25-14 in the opening match of the tournament.
Trinity fell to Hauser 25-13, 25-15, and lost to Jennings County 25-23, 27-25 in the final match of the day.
Crothersville came up short against Jennings County 25-9, 25-11, and lost to Hauser 25-15, 25-10.
Crothersville took a 2-0 lead in the first set against Trinity before the Cougars moved on top 7-2, building their lead to 11-4 and 17-5.
The Cougars held a 7-5 lead in the second set before going on a 7-2 run to lead 14-7, and the closest the Tigers could get was 15-11.
Both coaches, Chelsea Stroub of Trinity and Linda Luedeman of Crothersville, said they were pleased with some parts of each match, but found things they need to work on in practice this week.
“I thought we hustled a lot,” Stroub said.
“Our hustle was on point today, which is definitely helping get through a lot of slumps that we’re going through.”
The Cougars held a 24-21 lead in the second set against Jennings County before the Panthers rallied to win.
“We’re working on communicating, talking to one-another and just fighting through,” Stroub said.
“Right now we’re on a mental letdown. We need to be more aggressive at the net. We’re very timid at the net, especially when it starts getting close. We like to start tipping and rolling instead of swinging and finishing out strong.”
Hannah Sabotin topped the Cougars in attacks with eight kills and Abby Schult had seven.
Whitney Rogers was perfect in her serving with 31-for-31 with five aces, while Hailley Peters made all 19 tries with three aces.
The Cougars (8-12) will travel to Southwestern (Hanover) tonight, to Lanesville on Tuesday and host Loogootee on Friday.
Luedeman acknowledged the Tigers faced strong competition on the day.
“They’re all tough teams,” she said. “We’d seen Trinity before, and I think we can play a little bit better with Trinity because we’re more familiar with Trinity.
“We don’t face the other teams (during the season), and they’re good teams. We had a lot of great opportunities today. We just looked at this day as getting us prepared to go into Monday night’s game when we have a conference match (at) Henryville.”
Nikki Hickman topped the Tigers in kills with four, while Brittany Clem was 17-for-18 in serves with four aces.
After tonight the Tigers (4-12) will host Medora on Thursday and travel to Shawe Memorial (Madison) on Friday and to Scottsburg on Saturday.