Above: With Sarah Deschampe (No.16) watching, Morgan Mixdorf dove forward to save the ball from hitting the floor in the playoff game against Fond du Lac. Right: Anna Carman set this ball to her front court while Linden Sutton (No. 7) was ready to receive a pass.
It wasn’t easy, but the Cook County High School (CCHS) girls’ volleyball team won their first round Section 7A playoff game against Fond du Lac, 3 games to 1, on Monday, October 21 at home.
Fond du Lac got out of the gate early, taking an 11-6 lead, and the Vikings had to play catchup the entire first game. Although the Vikings got within 3 points, they could not quite close the gap and lost 25-22.
Early in the second game the Vikings got some great serving by Breanna Peterson and they led 8-3. Now settled and playing their offense, Viking setters Jessica Berg-Collman, Maddy Roy and Morgan Mixdorf repeatedly set up middle hitters Linden Sutton, Megan Lehto and Jami Sjogren for kills, and the Vikings won 25-16.
Game 3 was all the Vikings with the back line of Sarah Deschampe, Carrie Palmer, Anna Carman and the rest of the crew making great saves and setting up the front line who in turn set up Sutton or Sjogren for spikes or dinks over Fond du Lac’s front line.
The Vikings won 25-12 and seemed ready to coast to an easy 3-1 victory, but no one told that to the Fond du Lac players, who played hard and lost 27-25 to a Viking team that seemed to lose their cohesiveness on the court.
Head Coach Pam Taylor repeatedly reminded her players to, “Talk on the court. You need to talk to each other,” as balls fell to the floor with the Vikings not sure who was supposed to make the play.
All in all, as one Viking player said as she left the court, “It wasn’t our best game, but we won, and we know that we can play better.”
Linden Sutton finished the game with a career high 24 kills. Sarah Deschampe—with some spectacular digs—finished with 23 digs; Maddy Roy had 11 set assists while Jessica Berg-Collman finished with 15 set assists.
Dez LaPointe led her Fond du Lac team with 10 kills and her teammates Naazhe Sutten and Faryn Wilson each had 7 set assists.
Jessica Berg-Collman made a nice play on this ball. She finished with 15 set assists against Fond du Lac.
At press time, playoffs continued, with the Vikings playing Cromwell at Cromwell on Wednesday, October 23. The Vikings beat Cromwell 3-1, winning the first game 28-26, losing game two 25-16, then ran away from the Cardinals in games three and four by the identical scores of 25-11 to move on in Section 7A play.
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