Girls get 2-1 edge but fall to Sauk Centre

Sauk Centre 3, Tigers 2

The MACA girls got a good test Monday with the post-season nearing. The Tigers traveled to play the Sauk Centre Streeters.

The Streeters are the WCC-North champions. They had the look of a champion Monday. They defeated our Tigers but they needed the full five games.

The Tigers began weak, dropping game 1 by a 25-8 score, but games 2 and 3 were quite the different story. Coach Kristi Fehr's orange and black squad took games 2 and 3 by scores of 25-18 and 26-24. So, the Tigers were one game away from taking this match.

Sauk Centre had other ideas. Sauk summoned some new momentum and took game 4 by a score of 25-10, so the stage was set for the deciding game 5. It was a hard-fought game and had the host Streeters pleasing their fans with a 15-12 win.

Sauk Centre came out of the night with powerhouse won-lost numbers of 24-3. In conference the Streeters own a perfect 13-0 mark.
The Tigers' W/L numbers remain quite sterling: 15-5 in overall, 8-4 in conference.

Streeter Amanda Weir was an obstacle for the Tigers Monday. Weir fueled her team's win with 23 kills and five ace blocks. Aleah Gerhartz came at the Tigers with ten kills. Greasing that hitting attack were setters Amanda Kulzer (25 assists) and Katelyn Durbin (18 assists).

Beth Holland had the only serving ace for the Tigers. Beth's good/attempts numbers were nine of eleven. Haley Erdahl was 13 of 13 in serving. Other Tigers to be acknowledged in this department: Hunter Mundal (11 of 12), Terianne Itzen (10/10), Sydney Engebretson (19/20) and Chelsey Ehleringer (14/14).

Ehleringer raced around to perform 18 set assists while Erdahl had seven. Lacee Maanum went up to get three ace blocks while Engebretson had two and Kayla Pring one.

Itzen led on the digs list with 24, followed by Holland (18), Ehleringer (15), Mundal (9), Erdahl (7) and Engebretson (7).

We're saving hitting for last. Here it was Itzen showing the most force, producing 15 kills on 40 of 50 in good/attempts. Paige Schieler showed force in this five-game match, getting 11 kills on 34 of 45 in G/A.

Lacee Maanum and Engebretson both had five kills with Maanum going 23-for-27 and Engebretson 25-for-34. Pring had four kills on nine of ten in G/A, and Nicole Strobel had three kills on eight-for-ten.

This is the week when regular season play ends for the volleyball and football student-athletes. The volleyball finale is tonight (Tuesday, Oct. 15) at Montevideo. The football Tigers will travel to YME tomorrow (Wednesday) in a game where the odds of victory appear to be high.

I remember the days when Granite Falls, before YME, was a tremendous power in high school football. Granite Falls was the "Kilowatts." I also remember a time in the 1980s when Monte was a feared power. This year the football Tigers took care of business pretty routinely at Monte. Change happens.

 

Pheasant hunting starts

Change also happens with the change of seasons. We are seeing the steady arrival of more chilly temperatures, and this coincides with the pheasant hunters getting out and around. This was impressed on me Saturday when I was at Casey's and mingling with guys who were wearing vests full of shotgun shells.

As a kid I joined in the hunting pastime because my father always had.

It's interesting how pheasant hunters can look like an advancing army as they go across a field seeking to "flush" those ringnecks. The hunting dogs can get obsessed. The hunters advance the way "skirmishers" did in the old Civil War formation. Today of course we're shooting birds and not people, unless you're Dick Cheney (LOL).

My father and I used to hunt ducks at Frog Lake which also goes by the name Gorder Lake. Frog Lake is a nature bonanza, or at least it was then. There weren't many geese then. We'd be awestruck seeing any geese fly over. And our heart would skip a beat if they actually flew close enough to consider shooting at. Most often they'd still be too far away.

We often saw the "blues" and "snows" (blue geese and snow geese) fly overhead. There were more canvasback ducks then.

We anticipated the "northern flight" and those tightly-grouped flocks of bluebills speeding along like a jet plane and making that brief thundering noise to match.

Flax Lake is next to Frog Lake. Hunting ended up not being my cup of tea. Lifting bloody ducks out of ice-cold water is not something I relish.

Pheasant hunters aren't expected to fare real well this year, according to Minnesota Public Radio. The pheasant population is down about 30 per cent from 2012. The extended winter and cool wet spring are factors. Minnesota farmers have been plowing up more grassland to grow corn and other crops because of high prices.

The trend is likely to continue. Governor Mark Dayton was in Madelia in southern Minnesota for the opener.

- Brian Williams - morris mn minnesota - bwilly73@yahoo.com