This story is sponsored by: High Street Salon, Spa & Travel
By Paul Lecker
MarshfieldAreaSports.com
MARSHFIELD – The Marshfield volleyball team dominated Wisconsin Rapids in the first two games and eventually finished off a 3-0 sweep of the Raiders with a 25-10, 25-12, 25-18, win Thursday night at Marshfield High School.
The Tigers improve to 2-0 in the Wisconsin Valley Conference while handing Rapids the loss in its conference opener.
Tiffany Stargardt had 12 kills and seven digs, Mikala Sebastian added eight kills and Darian Molter had six digs for the Tigers.
“It’s what we’ve been talking about doing – the teams that we know we are better than, we want to be able to go after them,” Marshfield coach Dawn Sadowska said.
Marshfield cruised out to a 13-5 lead in Game 1 as Miranda Forrest finished off a 5-0 run with a pair of service aces.
The Tigers continued to pull away, scoring 17 of the final 22 points, to open the match with a win.
Rapids jumped out to a 6-2 lead in the second game before the Tigers regained the momentum, scoring 23 of 29 points to win going away.
Marshfield struggled through the third game but was never seriously threatened. Forrest served five straight points to open up a 14-6 lead and the Tigers led by more less than seven the rest of the game.
“There was a letdown in the third game, which, when you are playing like this, it is hard to keep that focus for three sets, but they did what they needed to do,” Sadowska said. “We were trying to runs some different things that we haven’t been doing, and there was some confusion out there, but I was happy with the way we played, especially those first two games.”
Junior Courtney Bauer, who is sharing the setter position with Tori Nanstad for the first time in her high school career, led the Tigers with 17 assists. Nanstad added 12.
Bauer’s move to part-time setter has been improving during the course of the early season.
“We’ve been throwing more and more at her each week and we’ve been running some plays that we haven’t been doing,” Sadowska said. “Probably the most difficult thing for her right now is to take control out on the court. Tori does a really good job of that – getting everyone together and telling them what’s going on. Courtney’s setting well, she just needs to take the control on the court as well.”
Marshfield has a nonconference match set for Monday at Antigo, then plays at the first of two Wisconsin Valley Conference tournaments on Sept. 15 at Wausau East.