Madison Passer (9) is shown in action in a volleyball contest from earlier this season. The Rebels lost a tough match against the Medford Tigers on Tuesday, Sept. 13. They will travel to Mapleton to take on the Eagles on Sept. 19.

The Medford Tigers took the first two sets of their volleyball contest against the host United South Central Rebels on Tuesday, Sept. 13. However, the home team fought back to take the third set to keep the match going.

Unfortunately for the Rebels, the Tigers prevailed in the fourth set to win the match 3-1.

Set scores were 25-17, 25-18, 23-25, 25-14.

“It was a tough match against a good Medford team,” USC coach Joe Kuechenmeister said. “I was proud of how our kids battled.”

The Rebels’ coach added the Tigers ran a faster tempo on offense than his players have seen so far this year.

“By the time we got to set 3 our kids were doing a better job of adjusting to their pace,” he commented.

According to Kuechenmeister, one of the areas where Medford was able to gain an advantage over his team was in serving and in receiving serves.

“Medford was able to be more offensive than we were,” Kuechenmeister said. “That was really the story of the match.”

Though they were unable to pull out the victory, The USC coach shared there were plenty of positives to take away from the match.

“We seemed to move and scrap better defensively as the match went on,” he noted. “We also hit for the best percentage we have all season long, with far more kills than errors, so we are going to look to continue that trend at the net. Overall, it was a good match to continue to build on and we look forward to our next outing at St. Clair on Thursday.”

USC was led by Kendal Harpestad with 10 kills, eight digs and two blocks. Kiera Schultz added nine kills, five digs and five blocks while Kyllah Curry tallied eight kills, 12 digs, two blocks and one assist.

Eleny Korn led the team with 28 assists. She also had six digs. Madison Passer contributed four kills, one dig and two blocks. Chloe Lutteke had three kills, three digs and one block and Molly Wegner had four digs.

After their game at St. Clair on Sept. 15, the Rebels will travel to Mapleton on Sept. 19, to take on the Maple River Eagles.

Catch up on all of the latest Rebel volleyball action in next week’s edition of the Faribault County Register.