Photo by Jake McNeill: Minneota defensive specialist Abby Rolbiecki attempts a dig during a girls basketball game against Russell-Tyler-Ruthton in Tyler on Tuesday night. The Vikings defeated the Knights in four sets.

TYLER — The Minneota volleyball team avenged last season’s Section 3A championship loss early this season. In a battle of top 5 teams in the state, the No. 3 Vikings held off the No. 4 Russell-Tyler-Ruthton Knights in four sets by a score of 25-22, 25-17, 28-25, 25-16.

“It’s really early on in the season, both teams are brand new. They’ve lost a lot of seniors, we’ve lost a lot of seniors, so I think we’re both in the same boat,” Minneota head coach Hayley Fruin said after the match. “We’re trying to figure out a rotation, figure out which kids are on the court. It’s nice that we can have a competitive game like this early in the season just to test where you’re at, but it also just helps see things that you need to work on and that showed tonight at times.”

The second set allowed the Vikings to set the tone for the rest of the night. While the first half of the set was competitive, the Vikings rapidly pulled away later. Minneota led 20-11 when RTR called a timeout. The Knights strung together a pair of unanswered points after the timeout but never were able to significantly cut into the deficit, falling 25-17.

Fruin attributed her team’s second-set success to improved passing and serving. Libby Sussner and Nevaeh Hennen led the Vikings’ passing efforts with 27 and 22 set assists respectively. Sussner also tied teammates Elivia Faris and Autumn Anderson with one ace on the night. 

“It’s really nice that we can work on getting an offensive player to only have one block and take advantage of having a hole, and then trying to work the middle on the other side and make her have to go pin-to-in as well,” Fruin said. “We were able to get them out of system, getting free balls back and taking advantage.”

While the second set had a lopsided finish, the first was competitive throughout. The Vikings scored two of the game’s first three points but RTR limited Minneota’s ability to string together long runs. Neither team had a service run of longer than 3 points in the set.

The Vikings maintained their slight lead until RTR went on a short run to tie the game at 16-16, prompting a Minneota timeout. The Vikings came out of the huddle and scored another three unanswered to get back in charge. 

RTR battled back to make it a 1-point game, 23-22 in favor of the Vikings, but an RTR service error put the ball in Minneota’s court and Elivia Faris came up with the game-ending kill to put Minneota up 1-0 with a 25-22 win.

Sophomore Jaylyn Coequyt led the Minneota hitters on the day. In her first time starting for the Vikings in the rivalry matchup, Coequyt racked up 13 kills to head the Minneota offense. Still, the Vikings put forth a balanced attack with nine kills from Elivia Faris, eight from Sarah Gruenes and seven from Leah Coequyt. Eden Meagher and Natalie Ratajczak each also contributed another six kills.

“I’ve been so impressed with Jaylyn from last year to this year. She’s definitely matured and she’s grown in volleyball, but she also grew a little bit taller and stronger,” Fruin said. “Her shot chart was phenomenal tonight. She was mixing it around, she knew that she could throw a deep line, she could tip it over the block. She was swinging line, swinging cross and it was nice to see that she was mixing up her shots. She didn’t play like a rookie tonight.”

Just when it seemed like Minneota was about to pull away in the third set, leading 10-6, the Knights locked back in. RTR scored 5 of the next 6 points to make it an 11-11 game before Faris smashed a hit off the RTR block for her fifth kill of the night and a 12-11 Minneota lead.

The Vikings extended their lead to 15-13 when three unanswered points gave RTR its first lead all night. After the Vikings tied it back up, consecutive kills from Sara Thooft gave the Knights an 18-16 lead.

RTR finished the set strong from there, putting up a strong defensive performance up at the net to claim 7 of the final 9 points in the 25-18 game 3 victory.

“We just started playing with a little more energy,” RTR assistant coach Neil Witte, filling into the head coaching role while Daynica Brown was out attending to a personal matter, said. “Our whole night, we were talking about our communication. We came in probably more tentative, more nervous… we have a lot of young new players, so they’re adjusting. It’s a big game, and then all of a sudden we got to the third game and they kind of forgot about it. We started playing more aggressive.

Witte added that the team showed glimmers of confidence down the stretch, giving the group something to build on going forward.

Ava Karbo led the Knights with 14 kills on the night while Sara and Paisley Thooft finished with nine and six respectively. Paisley was also effective at the net with five blocks while Dilyn Werkman and Karbo added three and two respectively.

The Vikings entered the fourth set serving aggressively and grabbed three of the first four points. RTR kept things tight until the Vikings eventually pulled away to a 15-9 lead when RTR called a timeout after committing a few errors at the net. The Vikings kept the Knights at bay and went on to claim a 25-16 win.

On the defensive end, Avery Schreurs led RTR with 27 digs on the day while Abby Rolbiecki had 17 in the libero role for Minneota. Meagher and Sara Thooft each also had 12 for their respective teams, while Laken Baartman added another 11 digs for RTR and Sussner and Anderson recorded 10 each for Minneota.

Leah Coequyt also finished with four blocks for the Vikings while Faris added three and Meagher added another two.

Brezlyn Buchert finished with 18 assists for RTR while Dru Ellefson and Schreurs added 11 and seven respectively.

Minneota improves to 2-0 with the win after defeating Class AA No. 9 Redwood Valley in straight sets in their season opener last week. The Vikings will look to keep the momentum flowing when they take on MACCRAY in Clara City on Thursday, Sept. 5.

Russell-Tyler-Ruthton falls to 2-1 on the year and will look to bounce back when it goes on the road to face Tracy-Milroy-Balaton on Tuesday.

“It gives us a check to where we’re at and what we’ve got to work on,” Witte said of the Tuesday loss. “It’s a big game, you’ve got the same situation you’re going to face when you get to the playoffs… You want to see what your team has and where its weaknesses are. We got to see some of that stuff, so that’s where we hope to improve. We’ve got the rest of the season to work on that.”

Witte cited communication and tentativeness as focus points for improvement, as well as avoiding predictability, but said that he feels his group has plenty of time to learn and get better.