A balanced offensive attack and a strong second set helped the Bowling Green volleyball team produce a 25-17, 25-11, 25-15 win over Springfield on Thursday.

The victory moves the Bobcats to 7-1 overall (3-1 NLL), while it was the eighth-consecutive straight-set loss for Springfield to open the campaign.

“We were moving the ball around quite a bit,” BG coach Deb Mathias said. “Some of my middles don’t always have the option to hit, (and) the right sides don’t always have the option to hit.

“A lot of times I feel like we force feed our outsides a little bit because those are the girls who are getting us the primary number of kills. Everyone kind of got to hit a little bit tonight and that was fun to watch everyone go out there and do their thing.”

Six different Bobcats terminated at least one attack, led by eight from Addison Brokaw and seven from Madison Cowan. Tara Hastings and Juliana Firsdon contributed three apiece, while Julia Strum had two. Molly Ruthenberg also had one via a setter dump.

Brokaw helped BG fight through a slow start in the opening set, producing three kills and a block in the opening frame. Of the 17 points Springfield had, 13 of them came via a Bobcat attack or service error.

With the set tied at 13 apiece, the Bobcats reeled off four straight points, which forced a Springfield timeout. Moments later, Brokaw had a kill and then teamed with Hastings for a block that put BG up 21-15.

The Bobcats closed out the set with three straight points, which included a kill from Firsdon, who also teamed with Hastings for a block during that stretch.

“We tried some different things tonight because we kind of felt we were able to do that, ran some different options out of serve receive,” Mathias said. “We kind of played around with it a little bit. I got all my subs in, got everyone into the game at some point in time.

“There were lulls. I thought we came out a little bit slow at the start, but I thought we played pretty strong in the second set.”

BG jumped out to an 11-3 lead in the second set, highlighted by a pair of kills and another block from Hastings. After Springfield ended an 8-0 run for the Bobcats with a block, the hosts reeled off a 6-0 run – highlighted by a pair of kills from Cowan – for a 17-4 advantage.

From there, the Bobcats closed out the set in cruise control, punctuated by a solo rejection from Hastings, who had a pair of terminations and blocks in the frame.

“We definitely picked our energy up,” Brokaw said of the second set. “We started having fun with it. In the beginning, we were tight and weren’t having fun, but then we came into the huddle and just said we need to have fun.”

The final set wasn’t the cleanest for BG, but Cowan and Brokaw had three kills apiece as the duo combined for six of the team’s seven terminations in the set.

Springfield, which got 27 of their 43 points in the match off BG errors, took their first lead of the match with four of the first six points, but Brokaw’s seventh kill knotted it at six, and Cowan’s sixth moments later made it 8-6.

Two more points, including an ace from Kendall Heinze finished a 5-0 spurt for the Bobcats, which forced a Springfield timeout.

“I felt we did a pretty good job on serve receive,” Mathias said. “I thought our defense was really good tonight. We didn’t really let a whole lot of balls drop.

“We made some mistakes reading and transitioning, but overall I thought we played pretty well on defense and serve receive was pretty good.”

Hanna Heinze, who had a match-best three aces, picked up one of those to give BG a 16-11 lead and force the second timeout from the visitors.

The Bobcats, who had five aces as a team in the final set, scored six of the final eight points in the match, which included the third termination from Firsdon.

Defensively, Hastings had four of BG’s 11 blocks as Firsdon, Brokaw and Strum each had multiple stuffs. Cowan had the other block.

Outside of the three aces from Hanna Heinze, who is also just 28 digs shy of 1,000 in her career, the Bobcats got two aces from Kendall Heinze while three others had one apiece.

Cowan had a match-best 18 digs, while Ruthenberg tallied 12 assists and 10 digs.

With Thursday’s outcome, Bowling Green has overcome some early injuries to win seven of eight to open the season. They’ll face Clay and Perrysburg next week.

“We have some inexperienced girls out there trying to find that same level of playing field as the seniors,” Mathias said. “They’re trying to reach those expectations and play to that level.

“It’s been a little bit of a transition, so having these slower games to start has been kind of nice, so when we do get into those faster-paced games, we’re ready.”