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HAMILTON — Veteran Niles volleyball coach Jenny Nate saw a lot of good things from her squad despite the fact that it went 0-3 at the Hamilton Quad on Saturday.

The Vikings lost to South Christian 25-17, 28-26 and 22-5 before being defeated by No. 9-ranked Hamilton 25-11, 25-20 and 25-11.

Niles (1-4) ended the day losing to Zeeland East, a Division 1 school, 25-22, 25-20 and 25-23.

“The Niles varsity volleyball team did exactly what they traveled to Hamilton to do, it improved as a team in all aspects of their game,” Nate said. “We knew that we would be facing extremely tough teams today, but we like to start off every season going against high level competition. We knew all three teams would run incredibly fast offenses and would have strong attackers.”

Nate said the Vikings went to Hamilton to get more court time and to work on improving in a variety of areas.

“One of our goals for today was to have more balanced scoring, and we did that with five players putting the ball down,” she said. “I’m excited to look back at the day and see the positive progressions we made in all aspects of our game. Any aspects of the game that our girls weren’t prepared for are on me as a coach, not them, and I will make sure we get to work Monday getting in reps and attacking our areas of weakness. On a positive note, we will also take what we did well today and build on it at practice so that we can continue to capitalize on our strengths.”

Getting to compete in several matches on a single day is valuable, according to Nate, especially early in the season.

“Quads like this force us to step up our game, play faster, fail, adjust and come back even harder in order to be able to compete and win at the highest level,” she said. “We are on a mission, and I know this team will be ready to hit the court Monday to prepare for our conference match against South Haven next Wednesday.”