By Brennan Stebbins (For OzarksSportsZone.com)
NEOSHO, Mo. – Five hours after the night began the Webb City volleyball team finally got the first-place plaque it came for.
The Cardinals capped a marathon night with a come-from-behind win against Carl Junction in the Class 4 District 11 championship Tuesday night in Neosho.
Webb City got stronger as the night went on, fighting back from a 28-26 loss in the opening game to win 25-23 and 25-15.
“Anytime you’re in districts everybody’s a big bundle of nerves and I really feel like that first set we came out really flat, really nervous,” Webb City coach Rhonda Lawrence said. “We got down 8-1 or something terrible and we fought back but you can’t let people get that much ahead. In volleyball it’s all mental, the momentum shift is huge and we were able to pull ourselves out of that.”
Webb City entered Tuesday as the top seed in the district and dispatched Republic 2-1 in the first semifinal. Carl Junction, the third seed, mounted a big comeback against second seed Carthage in the other semifinal as the Bulldogs sought their third-straight district title.
Carl Junction kept the momentum going against Webb City and scored the first five points of the match before opening up an 8-1 lead. The Bulldogs led 10-2 after a kill by junior Salma Lewis but Webb City rallied to tie the game at 15 on a kill by junior Maddy Peeples.
What followed was a back-and-forth finish as Webb City took one-point leads on shots by senior Anna Swearengen. The Cardinals led 24-23 and 25-24 but couldn’t finish Carl Junction off, and a Lewis kill finally gave Carl Junction the early win.
“We were still on fire from that last match,” Carl Junction coach Cheryl Sharples said. “I knew we needed to come in and go hard quickly and get on them. That was kind of our plan.”
CLICK HERE FOR PHOTOS OF THE MATCH
Webb City was sharper in the second game. The Cardinals led 10-5 early but Carl Junction tied it at 14 and took leads on kills by Lewis and sophomore Jessa Hylton. Lewis kept the Bulldogs in it with a shot to tie the game at 20, but a Webb City point from junior Sage Crane and then four points down the stretch from Peeples helped the Cardinals win it.
The Cardinals finally ran away with the match in the third set. It was tied at 6 early on and Carl Junction was still close at 11-10 but then Webb City pulled away. Peeples, Swearengen, senior Ashley Cates and senior Jasmine Putman all contributed points down the stretch.
“We’ve played pretty much that way all season,” Lawrence said. “We’ve played pretty level headed, we don’t get a lot of peaks and valleys and once we get on top a little bit and we start seeing the other team getting hesitant, that just brings out more aggression from us and we go after them even harder. That’s why serving wise we really went after them hard in that third set. We knew we had to do something to make it harder for them to get it to Salma. She’s a great player.”
“I felt like we ran out of gas a little bit there in the third game,” Sharples said. “I felt like my kids put it all out there in games one and two and we made some errors early in game three and kind of took ourselves out of the match.”
Carl Junction’s Lewis had 32 kills and freshman Logan Jones had 41 assists. Senior Dani Wrensch added 17 digs and sophomore Maggie Brown had four blocks. The Bulldogs fell to 18-16 with the loss.
Peeples led Webb City with 19 kills and Swearengen added 14. Senior Talyn Smith had five blocks, Cates had 16 digs, senior Allie Johnson had 18 assists and junior Anna Hettinger had 16 assists.
“My outsides Maddy Peeples and Anna Swearengen, their swings are always going to keep us in the game,” Lawrence said. “Ashley Cates, she’s opposite my setter and she probably doesn’t get a lot of air time or press for it but she is a solid cog. She keeps that fighting going. Talyn Smith, her energy that she brings to the floor, all the intangibles we need on a volleyball court, Talyn has it and she is so good on the bench even. She’s the first one to jump up and cheer. The senior class as a whole just really stepped up. That’s really what it boils down to is this senior class has stepped up, every one of them.”
Webb City improved to 28-6 and will play Saturday in the sectional round against the District 10 winner.
