Trojan volleyball 2-4 in weekend tournament

OSKALOOSA ? The Fairfield volleyball team had its work cut out for it Saturday at the Oskaloosa Invite.

The 13th-ranked (Class 3A) Trojans dropped four of six matches over the long day, beginning with two-set losses to Ottumwa (6-21, 12-21), Oskaloosa (20-22, 14-21) and Marshalltown (12-21, 15-21). Fairfield found the win column vs. Nevada (21-14, 21-18) and Centerville (20-22, 22-20, 15-6) before finishing the day with a 11-21, 14-21 loss to fourth-ranked (Class 2A) Grundy Center.

?When you go into a tournament like this and are playing some good quality teams, you hope your kids come out fired up and compete,? said Fairfield head coach Nancy Diers. ?We just had a hard time straight from out of the shoot ... and we just struggled for most of the day getting energy and trying to string things together.?

The Trojans started the day against Ottumwa, a team they had beaten at the Bulldogs? own tournament Sept. 17.

?We knew Ottumwa would be going great guns at us because we had beat them a few weeks ago,? said Diers. ?They weren?t happy about it, and they pretty much stuck it to us.?

Diers contributed much of the slow start and loss against Ottumwa to poor blocking and serve receive, a trend that would continue for the Trojans on Saturday. Against Ottumwa, Fairfield put up zero blocks and went 40 percent on serve receive.

?You knew right there that we weren?t going to get very many good attacks, and the ones we did they were standing there with the big block in front of them,? Diers said.

The Trojans? second matchup gave them their first look at Oskaloosa, the team they will face in the first round of regionals Oct. 24.

Diers saw two evenly matched teams in Fairfield and Centerville, but bad passes and blocking errors continued to hamper Fairfield, resulting in losses to the Indians and later to Marshalltown. Normally a strength for Fairfield, the team was only able to tally four aces during the opening three matches.

But the arrival of afternoon play brought the revival of Trojan volleyball.

?We passed a little bit better, we got some blocks up,? Diers said of the final three matches. ?We had seven blocks in the Nevada match and against everyone else we had maybe one or two.?

Marisa Repp and Erin Thompson had two block assists each vs. Nevada, and McKenna Ledger put up one solo block as Fairfield won its first match of the tournament.

The Trojan girls were able to carry their newfound confidence into the matchup with Centerville. The team slammed 27 kills and used improved passing and serve receive to earn their second victory of the day.

Against Centerville, McKenzie Lyman tallied a team-high seven kills, while Sidney Baumann and Thompson had four kills apiece. Sydney Burnett chipped in 15 assists.

The Trojans ended their low day with Grundy Center, perhaps their toughest test of the tournament.

?It was kind of an exclamation point to a long day of struggles to have to play them the last match, and scoring 11 and 14 points against them,? said Diers.

Nevertheless, Diers thought the team held its own considering the weapons the fourth-ranked (Class 4A) team brought to the table.

In the losing effort to the Spartans, Lyman led the team with four kills and Taylor Neil had five assists. Defensively, Repp had one block and Taylor Silvers came up with eight digs.

Fairfield, now 21-7 and 5-0 in conference play, will look to correct its course when it hosts Washington Tuesday.