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By Jeff Kessinger (For OzarksSportsZone.com)
You couldn’t have blamed Kickapoo if they’d just shrugged their shoulders in the second set against Ozark Tuesday night and moved on to the third. But that is most certainly not the choice they made.
Instead Kickapoo erased a seven-point deficit and fought off four set points to steal the set. They rode that momentum all the way to a 26-24, 29-27, 25-12 win at Ozark.
“We got in our heads a little bit and, with the tight score, we played a little bit more tense,” senior libero Kate Owen said. “We just needed to relax, find our game within ourselves and limit unforced errors. We just pulled together, trusted each other and that’s how we pulled out the second set.”
Trust came up quite a bit in the post-match conversation. Kickapoo is replacing four seniors from last year’s roster and everyone is learning how to play with the new lineups.
“That took a lot of guts, but it also took a lot of teamwork and trusting in each other,” Kickapoo coach Marci Adams said. “If the ball drops the game is over, so they really had to pull together as one.”
Neither team built up much of a lead in the first set. In fact, neither team could string together more than five points in a row. Kickapoo’s 5-0 run helped them build up a 16-13 lead and kills from Melanie Cox and Lauren Forbes put the set away.
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The loss seemed to wake up Ozark. The Tigers scored the first three points of the second set, including points at the net from Madison Satterly and Savannah Eisman, and built up leads of 10-5 and 19-12.
Owen helped rally Kickapoo, serving six straight points — including an ace — to close the deficit to 19-18. Two kills from Ozark’s McKenna Rhodes and one from Hannah Tadlock put Kickapoo on the ropes, but they didn’t give up. Forbes, Kaylee Corbin and Lauren Link all had kills to help Kickapoo fight off three set points and take a 25-24 lead.
Kickapoo also fought off a set point at 26-25 thanks to another kill by Forbes before finally winning the set. Owen described the team’s dialogue on the court during that rally as intense but positive.
“We know any negative mindset, any doubt automatically puts you down,” she said. “There was just a lot of positive talk, lifting each other up and trusting each other. We also communicated about where to hit it and that built our chemistry so much.”
Ozark never recovered from that second set. An 8-1 early in the third set put things out of reach quickly as Kickapoo cruised to the win. The Tigers fall to 1-1 with the loss.
Forbes finished with 12 kills and 17 digs for Kickapoo, while Owen had 15 digs and three aces. Lauren Faria handed 47 assists, while Cox and Lauren Farish finished with six kills each.
Kickapoo is now 6-1 on the season and having a lot of fun along the way.
“We have a lot of fun, I’ll put it like that,” Adams said, laughing. “We have some that bring the heat, we have some that bring the fun and it all makes for a great team.”
It isn’t all fun, though. Adams said her squad is working hard.
“The kids have been flexible with their positions, and the kids that have played positions for a while have really tried to get better each day,” Adams said. “Even though they’re a senior and they’re doing pretty good at their job, they’re being very diligent on the details and trying to fine-tune. That attention to detail has really paid off for us.”
