HOLMEN — Senior libero Kaila Casberg hit the floor time and time again to keep the Holmen High School volleyball team in points against Sparta on Tuesday.
Senior Linley Regan and juniors Harper Tengblad and Aspyn Truwe, among others, gave the Vikings some balance at the net to keep some pressure off senior middle Moira Linse.
This season will be a work in progress for coach Nicky Rose and her staff, but Tuesday’s 25-20, 23-25, 25-17, 25-16 MVC victory over Sparta in the first match of the season showed promise for a team undergoing the kind of lineup overhaul the Vikings are experiencing.
“It’s difficult,” Rose said of piecing together her lineup and rotation of players after a senior-dominant team went 31-1 and lost just three sets during the regular season last year. “We lost players at strong leadership positions, and it’s going to take some time.
“I like the fact that we’re going to struggle. I don’t like to say ‘last year’ but last year, we never struggled. We hit the ground running right out of the gate and ran until we couldn’t run anymore.”
Rose said trials and challenges await the Vikings, but they battled hard to beat the Spartans on Tuesday to survive the first of those.
Holmen led for most of the first set before Sparta put together some strong points for a 19-18 lead. The Vikings won seven of the next eight points for the victory.
The Spartans built an early four-point lead in the second set and stretched it to as many as eight points. Holmen worked the deficit down to one before Sparta won the final point.
The final two sets were pretty solid to give the team some momentum into the Beast of the Northeast Tournament in Appleton this weekend.
“I think it was a good match to try out some things,” said Linse, who had 10 kills and two aces. “We still weren’t set on a lineup when we got here, and we got to work through some problems.
“We started strong and then lost some of that energy in the second set. I think we picked it up again really well.”
Rose said she liked the in-match improvement she saw in serve-receive, and the offense had spurts of consistent flow with setters Claire Stevenson and Aspyn Archer. The Vikings also had a good one-two punch at that position with Makenna McHugh and Sadie Mayer last season.
Stevenson, a senior, finished with 20 assists. Archer, a junior, had 19.
Tengblad and Regan combined for 19 kills, and Tengblad’s 11 led the team.
Casberg’s role was important, too, with the team moving on after eight seasons with a Kline — Ellie for four years, sister Macy the next four and cousin Gracie overlapping their tenures — at the libero spot. Casberg led the Vikings with 26 digs.
“She did a great job,” Rose said of Casberg. “Her in the lib jersey was fun to watch. I thought she played some great defense and showed some leadership out there.
“That was a highlight, too.”
Rose and Linse both talked about the work ahead to find the right combination of players for the right situations. It will take some time before this team understands what it truly is after posting records of 152-29 overall and 64-4 in the MVC since the start of the 2020-2021 season.
The start, though, was a step in the right direction.
“We knew we were going to face adversity against a solid team like Sparta,” Linse said. “But we were able to accomplish what we came here for.”
