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Serve’s up: Lake Linden-Hubbell falls to Calumet in four sets Tuesday

Jamie Glenn/Daily Mining Gazette Calumet’s Molly Larson (14) leaps to perform a jump serve during a match against Lake Linden-Hubbell Tuesday night at the Lake Linden-Hubbell Gym.

LAKE LINDEN — The Lake Linden-Hubbell Lakes volleyball team fell 3-1 in their fall homecoming match against the Calumet Copper Kings, 17-25, 18-25, 25-20 and 15-25.

The Copper Kings hit the court with a rumble and made it known that they came ready to play. That momentum before the first whistle helped create quick assists, strong sets and heavy middle hits from junior Molly Larson, who, used to attend Lake Linden-Hubbell.

“I thought we came out strong in the first two,” said Copper Kings coach Matt Laho. “There were some issues with our timing and some of our hits. Our errors caught up with us in that third set, but I think we rebounded nicely in the fourth”

An early six-point lead for Calumet in the second set made a big difference before the end of the match. It was also the point in the match where fans on both sides of the net started cheering and creating a frenzy in the Lakes’ gym.

“We always talk about starting fast,” said Laho. “I thought (the girls) executed well. They got points on the board early, started to build that lead and it just allowed them to play more comfortably.”

The first two sets may have been rather quick, but the Lakes took advantage of slow gameplay from the Copper Kings, and came out with a win in the third set.

The Lakes’ coaching staff was not impressed with yet another difficult start.

“The girls like to make it interesting and always have a slow start,” said Lakes head coach Mandy Perrault. “It just took us too long to get into the swing of things. Two sets (down), that’s a pretty big hole to dig yourself back from.”

Perrault has been trying to get her girls to understand how early momentum can affect the outcome of a match.

“Momentum is a big thing in volleyball,” she said. “The girls, after that run, kind of got into their heads a little bit. They finally pulled themselves out of that by the third set and pulled that one out, (but) you can’t dig yourselves a hole like that.”

The Lakes put up a good fight, but came up short in the end due to a lack of consistency between sets.

“We’ve got to work on ball placement a little bit more,” said Perrault. “The girls tend to keep going to the same spots that aren’t working over and over, so (it’s) just about being a little smarter. (We need to) be able to put the ball where we need to.

Consistency, we’ll have stretches of ten points, where we look fantastic, and then we kind of fall apart. We resort back to small mistakes that kill us inevitably.”

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