The Bluejay girls teed off on a new season and a trio of opponents in Saturday’s Merrill volleyball scrimmage with Antigo, Rhinelander and Rib Lake.
“Today, it was a little rough,” Krug said. “I tried different combinations of girls. I have 15 girls on the (varsity) roster and to get all 15 in is a little tough.
“I know my starting line-up, but I have girls I don’t know how they are going to be able to compete on this level. That’s why we do this scrimmage.
“It’s just a good time to see what combinations work and which ones don’t. I tried some things today that I’m never going to try the rest of the season.”
One of the points of the event is to find areas needing improvement.
“Our serve-receive and free ball passing were not where we want them to be,” Krug said. “Our strategy for this year is keeping the ball in play. We lost a lot of big bangers to graduation, so we may not be able to put the ball away the same way.
“Defensively, we have a solid back row, so our goal is to keep the ball in play.”
The competition may not have been on the Valley level, but the squads gave Merrill a test at times.
“They each had a good hitter that we had to play good defense against,” Krug said. “The serve-receive was helped because everybody’s got some tough servers. In practice we know how each person serves, so it’s nice to have some strategic serves against us.”
Saturday’s scrimmage also provided a chance for returning players to show more than they can in practice.
“Rylee (Folz) and Emily (Page) are two that I thought looked good,” Krug said. “They worked well together.
“Rylee played club volleyball this year and has really picked up her game. She came in last year very green and got better as the year went on. But now she looks confident out there. She’s shown a big improvement and I’m looking for her to lead our team.
“Emily is solid. We’re using her all the way around this year after using a 6-2 last year with her and Reegan (Byer). Her game is just going to get better as she learns to work with the different hitters.”