Tigers top Rams in Hawkeye 10 opener
Glenwood’s Maddie Roenfeld sneaks a skill past a pair of Red Oak blockers in the Rams’ loss Thursday. Roenfeld led Glenwood with six kills.
Glenwood never got in synch and Red Oak avenged a loss five days earlier with a 25-9, 25-18, 25-21 win over the Rams in their Hawkeye 10 Conference home opener Thursday.
The Rams (7-8 overall, 0-2 in the conference) led by a score of 3-2 in the opening set and then never led again in the sweep by the Tigers (5-8 overall, 2-0 in the conference).
Glenwood coach Paula Carman said the biggest difference between the loss to Red Oak and the Rams’ 21-19. 21-23, 15-13 win in their home tournament Sept. 2 was consistency.
“Red Oak made more mistakes Saturday than they did tonight,” Carman said. “And we talked about that. Coming into tonight we knew they wouldn’t be the same team. Red Oak is a solid team and they’re a lot more efficient than we saw Saturday.”
That inconsistency plagued the Rams all night. They notched 19 kills but had a hitting efficiency of minus-.033 on 92 attempts. Their serving also struggled (83.3 percent) with no aces.
“We’ve been playing inconsistent and not as efficient as we need to,” Carman said. “We had serving errors, our passing was not good. We just couldn’t get a ball to our setters and our hitters were not confident and we didn’t really start blocking until the third set. When we’re poor in those areas we can’t get on top of things.”
After dropping the first two lopsided sets, Glenwood did challenge in the third. The trailed 9-2 at one point and against 18-11 but made a match of to trim the Tigers’ lead to 22-19 before falling 25-21.
Carman credited her team’s fight.
“We started playing with more control at the net and anticipating things more and seeing what was coming at us instead of waiting until the ball was at our hands,” Carman said. “Everybody needs to step up right now. We’re inexperienced but yet we have girls who have played a lot of years.
“We have to figure out how to put that together. We have to find that leadership piece right now; vocally, skill wise and team wise. We need to find that piece.”
Maddie Roenfeld led Glenwood with six kills. Zoie Carda and Kaylee Wray had four kills each. Allison Koontz and McKenna Koehler each has nine set assists.
Alexis Wallace recorded 14 kills and Merced Ramirez 12 to lead Red Oak.