Saints sweep Vikings in regional opener
By Kristi Nixon
ST. ANSGAR — St. Ansgar volleyball keeps on rolling.
The Saints (17-9) earned their 11th straight match victory in a 25-17, 25-6, 25-11 sweep of Northwood-Kensett on Monday, Oct. 18.
Bri Minnis led a well-rounded offense with 10 kills as coach Tyler Johnson’s team advanced to the Class 1A Region 5 quarterfinal against Turkey Valley (17-15), which earned a sweep of one-win Kee, Lansing.
“The setters did a good job of getting the ball to the middle, to the outside, the right side,” Johnson said. “And those girls did a good job of scoring points for us.
“We started a little slow, I thought, but this group doesn’t have a lot of playoff experience. They just needed to settle in. Things got better.”
Emma Hicken distributed 19 assists and Aspen Falk added 12.
Seven Saints hitting errors and a couple of service errors kept N-K in the opening set, but after the opener, it was all Saints.
In fact, St. Ansgar had a 7-0 second-set lead, forcing the Vikings to call timeout. Little improved for N-K as the visitors managed just two kills in the second set.
An even better start in the third had the Saints with a 9-0 lead before N-K got on the board with a kill from Morgan Wallin. In all, the Vikings tallied just 13 kills in the match.
“It felt super fun getting to that many swings off tonight,” senior libero Kennedy Schwiesow said, who accounted for a team-high 14 digs. “I thought we worked really well tonight, passing, setting and hitting-wise.
“We hadn’t played in a week, just needed to get those few rough passes out of the way, get into our system.”
This story will be updated in the Oct. 23 print edition of the Enterprise Journal.
