Barsness, Fier, Schulz among Laker volleyball award winners
Sports | Published on December 5, 2022 at 2:48pm CST
The Minnewaska Area volleyball team announced its season-ending awards recently. The Lakers went 13-15 overall this year and 8-6 in the WCC to place third of eight teams.
The Lakers won’t graduate any players from this year’s varsity team, coached by Michele Johnson, Caleb Greene, Kari Nelson and Jacalyn Skoglund.
Earning the Best Offensive Player award was Dreya Barsness, while Avery Fier was selected for the Best Defensive Player award and Haillie Schulz earned the Most Improved Award honor.
Selected for the “Tough as Nails” Award were Haley Shea and Grace Zenk, while Shea also earned the Leadership Award (“Bringing It”). Selected for the “Above the Line” awards (for going above and beyond with encouragement and positivity) were Barsness, Addy Kath and Zenk.
Serving as captains for the 2022 season were Barsness, Fier and Shea.
• Selected All-Conference for this year’s team were Barsness, Fier and Haley Shea.
Earning WCC All-Academic Gold honors for having a g.p.a. of 3.6-4.0 were Addy Kath, Haley Shea, Brooklyn Meyer, Grace Zenk, Dreya Barsness, Dacia Fleury, Avery Fier and Emma Poegel.
And, earning letters for the Laker volleyball program this fall were juniors Haley Shea, Avery Fier, Dreya Barsness, Miaya Guggisberg, Brooklyn Meyer and Grace Zenk; sophomores Addy Kath and Dacia Fleury; ninth-grader Emma Poegel; and eighth-graders Haillie Schulz, Emma Hellermann and Olivia MacDonald.
Season statistics
The Lakers also recently released their season stats for the 2022 season.
Dreya Barsness led the Lakers with 339 kills this season, while Dacia Fleury was next with 216 kills, Avery Fier had 200 and Miaya Guggisberg added 131. Fier had a team-best 21 percent kill percentage and Barsness was next at 19 percent.
The top servers for the Lakers this season were Haillie Schultz (93.9 percent), Haley Shea (93.1 percent) and Fier (91.7 percent), while Barsness had a team-high 40 ace-serves, followed by Brooklyn Meyer with 36, Schultz with 31 and Fier and Shea with 27 aces each.
Fier also led the Lakers with 315 digs, followed by Barsness with 280, Fleury with 269 and 217 for Shea, who also led Minnewaska Area with 849 set assists out of a team total of 958.
In addition, Guggisberg led the Lakers this season with 27 blocks, with Schulz adding 20 and Fleury and Fier both putting back 18 blocks.
• Sauk Centre won this year’s conference race with a perfect 14-0 record, followed by BOLD (11-3), Minnewaska Area (8-6), Melrose, Morris Area-CA and West Central Area (all 7-7), Montevideo (2-12) and Benson (0-14).
Minnewaska Area earned upset wins over Eden Valley-Watkins and NLS in the Section 3AA Tourney before falling to Paynesville in four games for the sub-section title.
