By Dylan Wallace
Trinity took on a young and talented Franklin team at home on Thursday night, but the Cougars got contributions across the board to win the match in four sets.
Trinity took the match 25-20, 25-23, 21-25, 25-15.
“I liked the fact that they just kept fighting,” head coach Faith Wilder-Newland said. “We had a lot of great touches on defense and a lot of long rallies that were just so much fun. Franklin was doing a really good job of blocking us, so we had to find a lot of ways to score and get around their defense.”
In the first set that Trinity won 25-20, the Owls thought they had it one point earlier on a Bailey Tabeling kill, but it was a net violation by Tabeling to make it 24-20.
Wilder-Newland called a timeout, and the next play, Tabeling emphatically spiked it to end the set without question.
The second set was a back-and-forth affair. With the set tied at 20, it was Tabeling who once again had a big kill to regain the momentum.
Leading 24-23, a long rally led to a mistake by Franklin, hitting the ball out of bounds to give the Cougars the 2-0 advantage.
The third set was much of the same as no team could gain more than a three-point advantage. Franklin showed some resiliency and came up with some big blocks to take the third set 25-21.
“The third set got away from us a little bit, and they made some big plays,” Wilder-Newland said.
Trinity came out strong in the fourth set, jumping out to a 7-2 lead, causing Franklin to call a timeout.
The Cougars continued to roll from there, using powerful kills from Tabeling and Ruthie Bingham to energize themselves as well as the Cougar faithful in attendance.
“They’re just so much fun and so energetic,” Wilder-Newland said on her two senior outside hitters. “They just refuse to quit no matter what. We got to love them.”
Trinity went on to win the fourth set 25-15, improving to 3-1 on the season.
Tabeling led the team with 23 kills while Bingham added 17. Freshman Addison Darlage had 52 assists, Kamzi Gross had 31 digs, Stella Kleffman had 30 digs and Bingham had 24 digs.
Wilder-Newland said the Cougars’ serving game was off on Thursday, but leading the way in that department was Kleffman with 3 aces and Gross had 1.
It was an all-around team effort for Trinity to come out on top Thursday.
“The energy, the attitude that we’re not gonna let the ball hit (the ground), that is gonna sustain us because we’re not super big,” Wilder-Newland said. “We’re gonna have to play a lot of defense.”
Trinity will be competing at the Brownstown Central Invite this Saturday starting at 9 a.m. The Cougars’ first match will be against Seymour at 9 in the auxiliary gym.
“We’re just gonna take it one point at a time, one set at a time,” Wilder-Newland said. “We play Seymour right off the bat, and we got Bloomington South in our pool, so we’re gonna see a lot of big teams. We just want to have that kind of effort (the one displayed Thursday) whether we win or lose, we’ll see a lot about ourselves, found out where we are and go from there.”