Tigers sweep county rival Hurley

HURLEY — Mercer dominated rival Hurley 25-7, 25-9, 25-15 in an Indianhead Conference East Division match Thursday.

“Any win over Hurley is sweet anytime,” Mercer coach Robyn Schoeneman said.

Mercer improved to 9-1 overall and 2-0 in the conference.

“We were excited coming into it and we performed well,” Schoeneman said. “We had a really hard time getting our offense going tonight, but that’s something we’re going to work on over the weekend. Getting the ball to our hitters has been a little bit more of a challenge the last couple of days. We’re hoping they’ll have a chance to take some good swings and get the ball down (Saturday at home). We did have a time there where we were really putting the ball down, but it needs to happen every time.

“It was a good test for us tonight.”

Mercer’s Nikki Kempf and Lexi Engler each had 10 kills. Kassie Wiedower totaled 12 assists and Caitlyn Hiller had 10 assists. Camille Kich and Sydney Thompson both had two kills.

“Mercer always does a really job of keeping the ball in play and picking everything up and throwing it back at you,” Hurley coach Liz Constantini said. “I was pretty impressed with their offense. They got some pretty good swings at the ball tonight.”

Hurley’s Felicia Herlevi and Kourtney Zacharias each had three kills. Julia Nelson had six assists.

“I thought our defense was really good,” Constantini said. “We had our coverages. We hustled. We started blocking in the middle of the second game. We were just giving them too easy of balls. Our offense just wasn’t executing to put any pressure on them.”

Schoeneman said Hurley was scrappy, returning balls the Tigers didn’t expect to come back over the net.

Hurley goes to Ashland Tuesday and Bessemer Thursday.

Mercer hosts a quad with Butternut, Lac Courte Oreilles and Bruce Saturday at 9 a.m.