Wolves fall to 1-9 after tough loss against Treynor

The struggles continue for the IKM-Manning Wolves varsity volleyball team as it falls to 1-9 on the season losing its seventh consecutive match. Tuesday at home, they lost three straight to the Treynor Cardinals, dropping the final set by 15 points.

Sports can be challenging and bring out emotions, and while winning is hard to do and never guaranteed, the Wolves hope to have brighter days ahead as they continue to push through what’s been a tough road.

Despite a tough road to this point, head coach McKaylie Croghan is still proud of their efforts and is highly optimistic.

“The girls do a really good job of keeping their heads up,” Croghan said. “They know we play in a tough conference that is very competitive. We also make team goals for ourselves that help throughout the game.”

Their lone win this season came against the Coon Rapids-Bayard Crusaders, in which they won two games in a best of three set.

“We had a nice win against Coon Rapids and played East Sac, Underwood and Treynor better than we have in the past,” Croghan said.

Even through the struggles, many girls still stand out leading in certain categories: Senior Amber Halbur with 51 assists, Junior Megan Williams with 25 kills, Senior Kylie Powers with eight blocks, Freshman Anna Stangl with 37 digs and nine serve aces.

They won’t have much time to rest as their next opponent will be the Audubon Wheelers (8-10) on the road Thursday night. Croghan highlighted areas of improvement the team needs to clean up moving forward.

“Audubon will be tough,” she said. “Defensively they do a nice job getting touches on a lot of balls. We need to clean up our serving a little bit. Last night we missed quite a few serves and that is something we can control. We also need to work on closing the block, so that helps our back row players be able to dig more balls.”