Lady Tigers roar into season

The Encampment Lady Tigers hosted their first games on Friday with a double-header against the Guernsey-Sunrise Lady Vikings (2-0) and the Dubois Lady Rams (2-0) in a best two-out-of-three setting to start their season 2-0. 

Robin Brown, head coach of the Lady Tigers, attributes the early success for her netters to excitement about being able to have a season and the hard work put in by the girls over the summer.

"They play well when they're excited, so I think that's going to be a strength that we can take forward with us," said Brown.

Lady Tigers vs.

Lady Vikings

Guernsey-Sunrise appeared ready to begin the Lady Tigers' season with a loss as they kept the score close in the first of two sets. Encampment, however, began working on their communication and previewed the well-oiled machine that fans were given glimpses of last season. While the first set ended with a score of 25-19, the Lady Vikings would fail to conquer Encampment in the second set and were handed a 25-9 defeat.

"We started off a little bit slow, I thought, but that was just first game jitters and then we kind of pulled it back together. They really work together as a team," said Brown. "Once we start to attack, and if they build up the energy, they play better and better."

Sophomore Cora Schroeder resumed her heavy hitter status on the team as she dealt 6 kills to Guernsey-Sunrise on Friday. Schroeder was followed by sophomore Alison Bromley and senior Shiann Finney, who both saw 3 kills, and sophomore Peyton Munroe with 2 kills.

"Cora's still stronger than she was last year but she's definitely going to be one of our top hitters," Brown said. "We have a line-up set up so Z (Lizzie James) can be used as a hitter a little bit more, Shiann's worked all summer on not just her strength in hitting but being a little bit more consistent in her hits, so that's going to help us out a lot."

Senior Grace Tieszen served 3 aces against the Lady Vikings and was joined by Bromley, who also served 3 aces. Schroeder, Finney and junior Katie Dugger each served one ace. Tieszen also led in digging with 6 digs against Guernsey-Sunrise. Senior Lizzie James followed with 5 digs, Bromley had 3 digs and Schroeder and Finney each had 2 digs.

Lady Tigers vs.

Lady Rams

The match against Dubois took a little longer to get to than originally expected, which Brown believes accounted for the Lady Tigers' slow start in the second match of the day.

"A big struggle is we sat for a really long time and we were only expecting to sit for about an hour and a half and it ended up being closer to three hours," said Brown. "So, I think that just kind of made it a little bit hard for us to get up and get going."

Despite that struggle, Encampment was able to sink their claws into the Lady Rams across two sets with scores of 25-18, 25-22.

"It was just kind of a struggle the whole way, in the long run they did pull it together and they worked as a team to pull themselves through that struggle," Brown said.

Schroeder, again, led in kills with 5 against the Lady Rams. Bromley and Finney both followed with 4 while Munroe, Tieszen and James had 1 kill each. In serving, Bromley and Tieszen both served 4 aces against Dubois while Schroeder served 3 aces. Schroeder also dug out the ball 5 times. Munroe dug 3 times and Bromley and James dug 2 times.

The Encampment Lady Tigers are 2-0 for the start of their season. They will face the Hanna, Elk Mountain, Medicine Bow (HEM) Lady Miners at 5 p.m. on Thursday in Hanna.