WATERTOWN — The Huron Tigers played well in spurts Tuesday night, but the Watertown Arrows, ranked No. 5 in Class AA volleyball, had more spurts and held on for a 3-1 (26-24, 25-16 21-25, 25-16) win in ESD action at the Watertown Civic Arena.

“Credit Watertown for putting us in bad situations tonight and forcing us into errors,” Huron coach Josh Lien said after the match. “We had too many ‘my fault’ errors tonight and you cannot make the types of mistakes we made tonight, against a team that is as good as Watertown.”

Huron looked to put the opening set away early, as a 7-1 run, keyed by three kills from Addyson Knight, two rom Aurora Dreyer and an Aly Davis ace staked the Tigers to a 13-6 lead. Huron was able to maintain an edge through the mid-portion of the set, before the Arrows caught fire and went on a 9-0 run, mostly on the left-handed serve of Emma Hendricks, who had five aces in the run. Madisyn Grimsrud opened the run with a kill and capped it with another.

Trailing 18-15, the Tigers rallied, as Chloe Carr got a kill and Hailey Rogers stroked an ace. A Davis kill, and a Dreyer block kill knotted the score at 19-all, only to watch Watertown go on a mini-run, led by Emery Thury’s back-to-back kills. Huron refused to go away however, rallying behind Knight and Carr to tie the score at 24-24, before a kill by Reese Munger and an ace by Natalie Pearson closed out the 26-24 win for the Arrows.

Watertown took an early lead in the second set, going on a 5-0 run and taking a 9-4 lead on an ace by Grace Corey. Huron got a block kill from Dreyer, a kill from setter Jencie Goergen and an ace from Madison Jurgens to claw back to within a point.

While the Tigers stayed close, Thury caught fire down the stretch, collecting eight kills in the set and closing out the 25-16 Arrow win.

The third set looked to follow the same script as the second, as Watertown owned the lead early and maintained it through the first half of the set. A Knight kill knotted the score at 12 and Dreyer scored to give Huron a lead. The score remained close throughout the set, but three straight Arrow hitting errors turned a Huron deficit into a one-point lead and the Tigers never gave it back.

Davis collected a kill, Sam Mangmoradeth got on the score sheet with a kill to the corner, Davis got her second ace and Mangmoradeth closed the 25-21 win with another kill.

“We did a great job of executing our plan in the third set tonight,” Lien said. “We got Sam involved, got Chloe involved a little more and we did a good job of sharing the load.”

Watertown quickly established that there wouldn’t be a fifth set, as they never trailed in the set and held an 11-6 lead before Huron began to come back.

Davis sandwiched kills around one by Mangmoradeth, and suddenly the lead was down to only two points, 12-10.

But the Arrows ran the next 11 points, mostly off the big swings of Grimsrud and Thury, to take a 21-10 lead and closed the deal from there.

“We have a mini-goal of having more ace serves than our opponent,” Lien said. “I think early on both teams were having trouble with serve-receive, but we both adapted and I think we probably stayed close with them serving. We took their shots and worked our way back, but they have a couple of really good hitters.”

Thury ended the match with 19 kills and Grimsrud added 16. Hendricks had six aces in the match for Watertown, which improves to 6-3 with the win.

For Huron, which slips to 3-4, Davis and Mangmoradeth each had eight kills, Knight and Dreyer had seven apiece and Carr ended with six kills, two of them block/kills. Goergen had three aces, three kills and 16 assists in the match.

Huron returns to action for a Monday match, hosting Yankton in the homecoming volleyball match for the Tigers. The match will be followed by coronation on Monday night, as Huron begins its homecoming festivities.

The Arrows swept the lower-level contests as well, winning the JV match 25-16 and 25-22, while the Sophomore match went three sets, with Watertown taking the 25-16, 15-25, 15-10 win.