“We played our game as well as we could, and we played very smoothly,” said Bulldogs coach Heather Haataja. “We did not have a lot of errors or poorly hit balls.”

The Bulldogs (11-3) came out swinging with an 8-4 lead in the first set. With Ella Storm on the line, it became a 10-5 Bulldog lead and Hancock never looked back in winning the set.

The second set was characterized by a couple of long service runs courtesy of the Bulldogs. The first one was begun by Brooke Koskela. She opened the second set with an impressive run of 11 unanswered points. Several of those tallies were aces. She led the team with six out of her 19 serves on the night.

Only teammate Emily Kilpela had more serves at 24. She had a service run of six in that set.

The Bulldogs’ Ella Strom lines up to serve Tuesday during a match against the Lakes in Lake Linden. In front of her is teammate Eva Heinonen. (Eddie O’Neill/Daily Mining Gazette)

During that second set and throughout the match, errors plagued the Lakes.

Miscommunication and misplayed balls led to little offensive momentum for the girls. They were one and done at the service line due to balls served out of bounds or into the net.

Ellen Jarvis, coach of the Lakes, admitted that this was nothing new.

“The girls’ attitudes are good, but they’ll make a mistake, and they get down and cannot get out of that hole,” she said. “They have the ability to play very good volleyball, but they lack the fire to face adversity and play strong when things aren’t going their way.”

With attitude being a weak spot for their opponent, the Bulldogs took advantage of it in the third set.

“We did what we needed to do and that was simply put the ball into play and let them beat themselves,” said Haataja. “Sometimes that is the best strategy. That consistent, steady offensive push certainly seemed to work for us tonight.”

Up next

The Bulldogs travel to Iron Mountain to take on the Mountaineers on Thursday. Meanwhile, the Lakes will be at Jeffers Thursday.