Cougars outlast Tigers in 4 sets

CROTHERSVILLE

The Trinity Lutheran volleyball team definitely deserves its Class A No. 3 ranking in the latest coaches poll, Crothersville coach Aaron Knieriem said.

“Honestly, we lost to the best team we’ve seen this year,” Knieriem said Tuesday night after the Cougars topped his Tigers, 25-9, 25-20, 19-25, 25-15.

“Defensively, they’re impossible (to score on),” he said. “Even your best hitters won’t get quality kills against a team like that. You may get kills, but they will always get a touch, and some of those kills actually turn into miraculous digs, and those miraculous digs a lot of times turn into points.

“That helps, especially sometimes if you are trying to make a run, that will break your back, and they broke our back a couple different times tonight in key moments. That’s a credit to them. Defensively, they know what they’re doing.”

The Cougars scored the first points all four sets.

Trinity jumped on top, 4-0, in the first set, and later increased its lead to 12-4 on a kill by Mallory Barker.

Barker served nine straight points to increase Trinity’s lead to 22-7, and set point came on an out-of-bounds serve by the Tigers.

The second set was tied at 8 before the Cougars took the lead for good, and they led, 20-13, on a kill by Sarah Stuckwisch. Stuckwisch also had a kill for set point.

Cougars coach Chelsey Hackman said, “When we started, we were passing well. We were hitting well. We weren’t really making any of our own errors. We got in that third game. We’ve had that problem before, and we got kind of lax and thinking it was over, and we ended up letting a game get away from us.

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