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Forest Lake volleyball wins in straight sets over White Bear Lake
By Josh Nelson
Contributing Writer
FOREST LAKE — Thursday night’s match-up between the White Bear Bears and Forest Lake Rangers featured a duel between two of the best players in the conference. All-Suburban East performers Kelsey Mattai of White Bear Lake and Lexi Alm of Forest Lake battled hard for three games, but unfortunately for Mattai, Alm got a little better help from her teammates as Forest Lake took the match in three straight games, winning 25-16, 25-13, and 25-16 in dominating fashion.
“Everyone played really well tonight, but Lexi was great,”said Ranger coach Sherri Alm. “She hit well, passed well, played good defense, all-around effort.”
The reason for the Rangers’ success seemed to lie in their ability to keep the ball away from Mattai as much as possible. They lobbed it over and hit it away from her, but even with the plan to play "Keep Away From Kelsey," Mattai ended up being a huge factor in the game, both spiking the ball at the net for the Bears and using her length to deny Ranger attempts.
“She’s such a talented player, one of the best I’ve seen,” said Alm. “We definitely tried to keep it away from Kelsey as much as we could. Our plan was to try and lob it over her and make the back line players beat us, but she’s such a good player.”
Game one was a relatively competitive contest. White Bear led in game one by scores of 6-4, 7-5, and 8-7 before the Rangers took over for good. Forest Lake went on a 10-3 run to end the first game with a 25-16 victory.
Game two saw more of the same for the Bears. They hung around, exchanging points with the Rangers, until the Rangers went on a 15-4 run, disheartening the Bears to end with a 25-13 victory.
Then to complete the sweep, Alm turned up the heat for the Rangers. She had four kills and four aces — three of them consecutively — to defeat a battered and beaten Bears squad 25-16 in the final game.
“Everyone played really well tonight, but Lexi was great,”said Ranger coach Sherri Alm. “She hit well, passed well, played good defense, all-around effort.”
The reason for the Rangers’ success seemed to lie in their ability to keep the ball away from Mattai as much as possible. They lobbed it over and hit it away from her, but even with the plan to play "Keep Away From Kelsey," Mattai ended up being a huge factor in the game, both spiking the ball at the net for the Bears and using her length to deny Ranger attempts.
“She’s such a talented player, one of the best I’ve seen,” said Alm. “We definitely tried to keep it away from Kelsey as much as we could. Our plan was to try and lob it over her and make the back line players beat us, but she’s such a good player.”
Game one was a relatively competitive contest. White Bear led in game one by scores of 6-4, 7-5, and 8-7 before the Rangers took over for good. Forest Lake went on a 10-3 run to end the first game with a 25-16 victory.
Game two saw more of the same for the Bears. They hung around, exchanging points with the Rangers, until the Rangers went on a 15-4 run, disheartening the Bears to end with a 25-13 victory.
Then to complete the sweep, Alm turned up the heat for the Rangers. She had four kills and four aces — three of them consecutively — to defeat a battered and beaten Bears squad 25-16 in the final game.
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