By By SCOTT NOVAK / Niles Daily Star
DOWAGIAC – The scorebook will say that Niles defeated Dowagiac in three games Monday night in a non-conference volleyball match.
What the scorebook won't say is that neither coach was pleased with their team's performance.
The Lady Vikings defeated the Chieftains 25-17, 25-23 and 25-23.
"We are still trying to get a comfortable tempo on offense, the Dowagiac team really kept us off balance in the match and we still struggled to put the ball down," Niles coach Linda Goodrich said. "One of the best things we have going for us is the depth of our team. We had no players with more than 9 kills, but had 7 players with 3 or more."
First-year Dowagiac coach Ryan Frontczak said, "as you can see the scores were really close on every game but the first one. We really did not deserve to win this game tonight. We made way too many mistakes to win. This is a really hard loss for the team. I really thought coming in we had a good chance of beating Niles for the first time in a really long time. But, as a team we just let too many mistakes take over the game and beat us in the long run."
The Lady Vikings used the serving of Samantha Brawley to take the first game easily.
Brawley served up the first five points of the opening game and then served six straight winners to put Niles up 17-13.
From there the Lady Vikings cruised home with the first game victory.
The second and third games were battles.
Neither team was able to build up much of an advantage. The match was tied seven times from 13-13 on.
In the final game, Dowagiac grabbed a 6-1 lead and then led 21-17 before the Lady Vikings rallied for the win.
"Byanna Cramer came in off the bench at the libero position and really played well all night," Goodrich said. "It was nice to see our younger players in games two and three really battle it out for the wins against such a good Dowagiac team."
Katie Bourbonnais had nine kills and three blocks for the Lady Vikings, while Kaylynn Stephenson added eight kills and 23 digs. Brittney Wolverton finished with seven kills, three aces and two blocks.
Karly Kennedy finished with 17 digs and Cramer 16 digs. Brawley finished the match with 17 assists, while Demi Schrader added 12 assists.
By design, Frontczak did not provide stats for the match.
"It really was not just one thing it was a combination of a great deal of things. For that I am not doing individual stats and we are going to just take this one as a team lose," he said.
The Lady Vikings will be back in action on Wednesday when it hosts Mattawan in a Big 16 West Division match.
Dowagiac will host Comstock on Thursday in a Wolverine Conference match.