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Ozark coach Adeana Brewer was concerned coming into Tuesday’s Christian County showdown with Nixa. Her Lady Tigers have had some struggles starting matches this season, while a young Nixa squad brings a lot of energy to the court each time out.
The Lady Tigers would drop the first set before rallying for a 2-1 home victory over their rival.
“They (Nixa) are an extremely young team, so they play with a lot of energy and a lot of fire with nothing to lose,” Brewer said. “I feel like sometimes our team doesn’t start out as strong because they have an expectation of themselves or a target on their backs. It takes a little time to get some rhythm going, but after we decided not to worry about who was on the other side of the net and just worried about playing Ozark volleyball on our side of the net then I felt like we created more rhythm.”
Nixa came out and won the first set in decisive fashion 25-15. The Lady Eagles went on a 9-3 run to start the set and never allowed Ozark to threaten.
“They (Nixa) are very good defensively and they are going to keep rallies going,” Brewer said. “A lot of times we will get that first ball kill and expect to end play when we attack it. Our talk in the huddle was that we have to keep going at them even if it doesn’t happen in transition No. 1 or No. 2. Keep pressuring them and putting pressure on them so they error or make a mistake first.”
Brewer had a simple message for her team between sets.
“After the first set coach Brewer told us that we needed to not worry about who we were playing and we just needed to play Ozark volleyball,” senior Katie Vorhies said. “I think that stuck with a lot of us to keep our own skills and games and play to our own abilities and not be intimidated by our competitors.”
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Ozark took Brewer’s words to heart with a 25-13 win in the second set. That included a 6-1 start before expanding the lead to 12 at 16-4.
“The first set we had more of a nervous energy, and the second set it was more of a happy, competitive energy,” Vorhies said. “The more kills we got and the more balls we played up I think the more our momentum increased, and I think that is what helped up win.”
For Nixa, the energy from the first set did not translate into the second set.
“We had a lot of excitement and energy in that first set, and we were just going for things,” Nixa coach Annie Zimmerman said. “When we won that first set the way that we did there was just a bit of an exhale between the first and the second. We did not have that same level of energy coming out in the second set. As far as hitting, I think that caused us to be more careful. We were tipping way more than we did in the first, and that allowed them (Ozark) to get their hands on a lot of balls. They were making great defensive plays, and we were giving them almost free balls in those tipping situations which made a huge shift in what we were doing offensively.”
That trend continued into the third set. Ozark again jumped on Nixa quickly with a 12-3 lead. The Lady would close the gap just a bit, but ultimately fall 25-17 to drop the match. In the first set, Nixa scored three consecutive points four separate times. The Lady Eagles managed just one more three-point run the rest of the night.
The match kept Ozark undefeated in conference and in the conversation for a No. 1 seed in the district, but Brewer tried not to focus on that too much on Tuesday.
“We are trying to live in the moment right now,” Brewer said. “We have been trying not to put too much emphasis on anything but playing Ozark volleyball and ourselves. When we buy into what we want to do and not worrying about any other external factor, we are pretty solid.”
The Lady Tigers are now 16-2 on the season with five conference matches left.
Nixa drops to 11-3 on the year with four conference matches left. The Lady Eagles will be able to take valuable lessons from Tuesday’s match into the rest of their season.
“Now it is just going to be having the consistency to execute like we did in the first set. Our consistency totally left into the second and third. We can’t have that big dip in the energy level. I think that is the total key to our team is just where is our energy level at? As far as the leadership on the court, we got really quiet in that second set and I have to have multiple people on the court encouraging everybody to talk and setting that example of talking through every single play,” Zimmerman said.
