Young La Grande team gaining valuable experience

ON THE ROAD: The La Grande volleyball team played at total of six teams in a span of five days last week. The Tigers host Weston-McEwen Tuesday night in their first home game of the season. Observer file photo

LHS started out the busy week with a visit to Hermiston Tuesday. The Tigers never seemed to get in any sort of rhythm and lost to the Bulldogs 25-18, 25-22 and 25-16.

Mariah Sain led La Grande with eight kills, while Cheyenne May had three kills. Libero Mackenzie Trotter had 27 digs for the match.

Following the match against Hermiston, LHS traveled over the hill again for a contest against Pendleton Thursday. This time La Grande showed up to play, and took it to the Buckaroos early winning the first two games, 25-18 and 26-24.

Pendleton would rally however, and won the next three games 25-17, 25-12 and 15-11.

Aleia May and Cheyenne Ashley played outstanding defense for the Tigers as each girl finished with nine digs, while Trotter and Jacey Childs had 10 digs apiece. Childs also was 100 percent serving for the match.

Next, La Grande went to Walla Walla for a tournament that featured teams from around the region.

The Tigers first match was against Bishop-Kelly out of Boise, Idaho. The Tournament was set up to where the teams would play three games no matter what the outcome was. In this one, the Knights took two out of three games against La Grande. The Tigers faced off with Sunnyside, Wash., next, and swept the Grizzlies 25-22, 25-22 and 15-10 in an all-around good match.

La Grande never really competed against a talented Richland, Wash., team, losing both matches they played.

The Tigers were put into the consolation bracket and were pitted against a familiar team for their final match — the Pendleton Buckaroos.

This time LHS got down early against the Bucks, losing both games 25-9 and 25-17 to take seventh place at the tournament.

“Overall it was a good week. I used a lot of different lineups and some of my younger players got some valuable playing time that will hopefully help when league play starts,” Becker said of  last week. “I really liked how we competed with some really talented teams.

“I just think the girls kind of got tired there at the end and that led to some mental lapses. But that’s going to happen whenever you play as many games as we have the last week.”

LHS will make their home debut Tuesday, when they host Weston-McEwen in a rematch from earlier this year.

The match is scheduled to start at 5:30 p.m., following the junior varsity match that starts at 4 p.m.