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NHS girls take home fifth in Bend,
boys sixth
Newberg water polo teams head into
stretch run
Bruins score first NWC win thanks to
Pitner's four goals
Bruins go winless during weekend
NHS
serves up another
win, dumps Dallas |
The volleyball team improves to 10-3 with three
matches remaining in the Pac-9 season |
By B. Scott Anderson, Newberg
Graphic sports editor
E-mail Scott at banderson@eaglenewspapers.com
|
 Coming off a tough three-way
matchup with McMinnville and Tualatin last week, the Newberg High School volleyball team
faced a decidedly much less fierce opponent Monday — the Dallas Dragons.
The host Tigers capitalized on several Dragon errors en route to a 25-17,
25-16, 25-19 victory.
“They made it easy and missed a lot of serves,” said Newberg coach
Ronni Cook of Dallas. “They made a lot of mistakes, but we’ll take it.”
Coming into the match it appeared Dallas may have had an advantage. The
Dragons upset Canby (10-3) last week while the Tigers tried to forget a three-game loss at
McMinnville.
“It was an upset, definitely,” Cook said of the Dallas win.
“But they went five games with Canby the last time, though, too. So it must be some
kind of matchup that doesn’t work for Canby.”
The Dragons’ momentum disappeared once the match began. In the first
game, the two teams stood tied 6-6 before the Tigers took control. After a kill by senior
Julie Rosario, the Tigers found themselves up 11-8. A kill by junior Rachel Yurkovich put
the Tigers up 19-15, then a kill by senior Maria Acosta and an ace by senior Kaela Corbet
put the Tigers up 22-16 before they wrapped up the win.
In the second game, the Tigers went up early, leading 8-0 before the Dragons
knew what hit them. The Tigers rolled to the win and trounced the Dragons in the final
game.
“We’ll take a win anyway we can get it,” Cook said. “We
have a couple girls who are starting to get sick and you can kind of tell that the energy
level wasn’t the same as it usually is. I’m not happy about that, but of course
we’ll take the win.”
Newberg’s 10-3 mark has them poised to win a league championship, their
first in decades. Cook said she isn’t sure when the last time the Tigers won a league
title.
“I wish that we could find out somehow,” she said. “I don’t
know if we have any archives or anything like that, but I don’t know if they’ve
ever gotten a league championship and I’m almost sure that it’s been 25 years
since they’ve been to the playoffs.”
Coming into the season, few expected the Tigers to be in the position they
are in. Now, the Tigers are asking themselves what is more important — a league
championship or a state playoff berth.
“At first our goal was to just make the playoffs, and that was going to
be big, and then we realized where we were and now, to me, I think a league championship
would be pretty neat,” Cook said.
A league title would bolster confidence of the Tigers. “People are
starting to follow the girls, so it’s kind of neat,” Cook said.
The crowd at Monday’s contest was one of the largest this season.
“I think they’re getting bigger,” Cook said. “I think the
more people here about this, the more people that will show up.”
A big crowd didn’t help the Tigers last week. In Newberg’s matchup
away a rowdy McMinnville crowd got into the heads of the Tigers. On Monday the Newberg
crowd helped out the Tigers.
“It helps us, sure,” Cook said of the home crowd. “It
definitely helps. But I think at McMinnville the other night, it had a negative effect on
us. ... The McMinnville crowd was pretty rowdy and they got their girls into it and our
girls didn’t respond very well to that. They took it kind of personally, which really
shouldn’t happen.”
The Tigers have one more chance to play in front of their home crowd. On
Thursday, the Tigers host Forest Grove and will also host a senior night for all of the
seniors on the team. Cook also said that any middle school volleyball player from Newberg
who attends the game will get into the match for free. Cook said it’s a gesture
toward the middle school programs that will be the future of the NHS volleyball program.
“We’ve wanted to get over to the middle schools to let us practice
or at least put on some demonstrations, but we haven’t had a chance yet,” she
said. “I wanted to do something to get them involved and get the young girls excited
about volleyball and now is the time to do it when our girls are playing like this.
It’s exciting.”
The Tigers play at a tournament at Glencoe Saturday and then close out the
regular season with a road match at Tigard Oct. 20.
“We just need to pick up the energy for the rest of the week,” Cook
said. “It just wasn’t quite there tonight but Dallas kind of helped us
out.” |
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From Oct. 15,
2003, Newberg Graphic
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