The Bulldogs of Lake Mills came into Thursday night’s match against Mason City Newman ranked No. 6 in Class 2A volleyball, but by Lake Mills standards came away with a less than impressive 25-20, 25-19, and 26-24 win.

“That was bad, I think that is about as bad as we have played in a long time,” said Bulldogs head coach Jim Boehmer. “We had over 20 missed serves. We didn’t serve worth a darn, we didn’t pass real good, we didn’t set the ball real well, we didn’t hit the ball worth a darn, you take all those and that’s usually a recipe for disaster.”

With the victory the Bulldogs extend their amazing record of consecutive North Iowa Conference wins to 54, they have not lost a conference match since 2003, and are gunning for the team’s ninth title in the last 13 years.

The Bulldogs led early in game one but lost the advantage to the Knights at 10-6 before tying the score at 11-11 on a thunderous Sammy Nelson kill. From there the game teetered back-and-forth with Lake Mills finally putting it away with another Nelson bomb on game point for a 25-20 win.

“Newman took a game from Osage on Tuesday so we knew they were capable of doing it to us,” Boehmer said. “They were in that first game all the way to the end. You have to give them credit, they have really improved.”

After senior middle hitter Jordynn Brackey took a pass from Cassie Christianson and smoked it down the line for a 3-0 lead in game two, it was obvious who the dominant team was, but to the Bulldogs surprise, they just couldn’t shake the pesky Knights.

Lake Mills led by as much as seven at 17-10 but failed to put Newman away when the Knights once again made a game of it at 17-14. The one thing the Bulldogs could count on through out the night was Nelson to put the fishing touches on the game as the senior outside hitter smashed the game winner for a 2-0 advantage.

When a team has a 54-match win streak there are going to be teams that look to get just one game, for the Knights that looked to be game three when they had a 24-23 lead with the serve. That’s when the Bulldogs’ pride took over as they closed out the match with two straight points for a close 26-24 win.

“I don’t think we played very well either,” Nelson said. “We have all the talent, we just have to put it all together and become a great team. Tonight was just an off-night for us.”

Brackey and Nelson led the Bulldogs with 11 and 10 kills respectively and are first and second on the team for the season. Brackey has 94 and Nelson 46, while Christianson has dished out a team high 184 assists for the year.

With the win Lake Mills improves to 9-0 overall and 3-0 in the NIC.