Head Coach Greg Lynch and his Becker Bulldog volleyball team had taken a circuitous route to arrive at the first week of competition.  First the season was postponed until spring, then the MSHSL reversed course and Lynch had to quickly assemble his squad and get practice plans drawn up.  The schedule also had to be re-done and the first week of the season saw the Bulldogs take to the road to face the top two teams in the conference.

“It’s not the way I would have ideally drawn it [the season plan] up,” joked Lynch. “We started out with our two strongest opponents from a year ago and there’s a good chance they will be near the top of the conference again this year.”

The results were a pair of losses to two very good volleyball teams.

Two weeks ago Thursday, the Bulldogs opened up at North Branch and fell 3-1.  However, many of the scores were extremely close including a 25-27 loss in the third game.

“It was a really close match throughout,” said Lynch.

Last Tuesday night, Becker traveled to Monticello for their second match of the season and lost 3-0 to a stellar Magic squad.

Monticello has a very active and quick middle hitting offense and Becker countered it well, just not well enough to come out ahead.

“Our block was there but it wasn’t as effective as we needed it to be,” said Lynch.

Kady Lindbom had shown to be a hitting force early in the season, as she has already chalked up 71 attack attempts and nearly 30 kills.  Lynch also cited Ellie Wenner and her setting as a key to the team’s chances this season.

Hornets

Tuesday night, the Bulldogs hosted their Highway 10 rivals the Big Lake Hornets and Becker came out on the attack, winning the match 3-0.  Set scores were 25-13, 25-18 and 25-21.

“We had a good night as most of our hitters had a bunch of good connections,” said Lynch.  “Our middle hitters had a bunch of quick kills and it was fun to see that because we’ve really worked on that in practice.”

Lynch credited Evelyn Kreft and Kady Lindbom as having excellent nights in the hitting department, while he also said the team’s passing was spot on.

In the stats department, Becker led in the ace serve category with 6 to Big Lake’s 1, while digs were nearly even with the Bulldogs having 50 to the Hornets’ 49.  The Hornets committed 45 errors, while Becker had 25.

“Our passing was very good which helped fuel our offense,” said Lynch.  “Emile Baumgartner, Kyanna Marx and Ashlynne Kuklok all had great nights.”

In addition to the middle hitters, Lynch also saw some signs of life from the team’s outside game and he complimented Cami Ramola and Alexa Williams as having important contributions against the Hornets.

Thursday night, the Bulldogs were scheduled to host the Princeton Tigers.  See complete details in next week’s Patriot.