Ladies have tough go at Regionals

Sonja Karp
NLJ Sports Reporter
 
As the four seed from the Northeast quadrant, the Lady Dogies had the toughest draw of the 3A East Regional Tournament last Friday as they were tasked with taking on the eventual Regional Champs in the first round. 
The Lady Outlaws of Rawlins entered the tournament with a 31-5 season record and would go on to extend that to 35-5 by the end of play on Saturday.
“They are a solid team with all the tools,” head coach Jenny Willard began. “They are big, and when the girls were shaking hands to begin the match, we looked tiny in comparison.”
Despite going in with the odds stacked pretty firmly against them, the Lady Dogies put up a valiant and impressive fight early on during the first two sets of play, going ball-for-ball with Rawlins.  
“Up until about 10 or 11 points in each of the first two sets, we played them even,” Willard exclaimed. “But then we kind of fell apart when they strung together some runs and widened the gap.”
Newcastle would go on to lose the match in three sets: 13-25, 10-25, and 11-25. However, the scores do not tell the whole story. 
“The girls came with a different mojo, a great attitude and high energy so it was great to start the weekend off that way,” Willard determined. “After the game, they felt pretty good about how they had played, because they knew what they were up against as far as the height and skill level all the way around, and they still held their own for a while.” 
The loss meant the squad would take on the loser of the Burns/Buffalo contest. Just a week prior, these two teams played each other in the triangular in Newcastle, and Buffalo had emerged the winner in five sets. Once again, the contest was pushed to the fifth set, but this time it was Burns who took the victory.
With that, Newcastle faced off against the Lady Bison at 9:00 on Saturday morning in the first loser-out contest of the tournament. Both teams seemed to be a little groggy in this coffee and donut matchup, but it was Buffalo who was able to wake up enough to take the win.
“I don’t know if it was the jitters of knowing it could possibly be their last game of the season, but the girls just never seemed to get going,” Willard sighed. “I didn’t feel like Buffalo played up to their potential either, honestly. It just felt flat on both sides of the net.”
In each set, the two squads took turns at making runs, but the Lady Dogies simply couldn’t get within reach before the Bison would take momentum back to their side of the net. The first two sets ended in Newcastle losing 20-25 each, which made the third a do-or-die situation.
Unfortunately, it started off poorly with the Lady Dogies being unable to get Buffalo’s first server off the line. When they finally got the sideout, she had served 11 in a row to put Newcastle in a deep hole.
“I tried subbing to change things up and ended up having to leave players on the court in positions they don’t usually play because I was out of subs,” Willard stated. “I did everything I could but it came down to the girls having to clean up the unforced errors. We were having double hits from our setters, serves in the net, unforced errors from our libero, and we just struggled to play within our own positions.”
Newcastle rebounded to cut the lead a bit, but the deficit was too much to overcome so they lost the set and match 16-25, and thus ended their season. 
“It’s so frustrating because we know we can play better than that,” Willard sighed. “We proved that when we took Buffalo to five sets when we played them here earlier.”
Upsets are to be expected when it comes to tournament play and there were a couple early when the three seeds won in the quarterfinals against the two seeds. However, when it all came out in the wash, the two seeds played each other for third and fourth and the one seeds were in the championship.
With the 2019 season in the books, Willard reflected on an admittedly difficult year, but one that showed definite growth and improvement.
“Unfortunately, the record doesn’t show the growth the girls made throughout the season,” she nodded. “It was a hard season, and it’s defeating to not have some wins on the record, but that really isn’t what it’s about in the long run.”
“It was the first season with a new coach, new defenses and new offenses and that takes some adjusting on the part of the players,” she continued. “They made a lot of growth especially for everything I threw at them, and we have some really exciting players and talent returning to us next year.”
The Lady Dogies are losing six seniors in Grace Coy, Madi Pearson, Johnna Dawson, Jayme Cass, Christina Hadlock and Kelsey Bennett. But they will bring back five seniors next year, three juniors and eight sophomores. Included in that number are four starters, two of which are returning setters.
Willard was also proud of the fact that her squad received three different sportsmanship awards, and gained a good understanding of some pretty important life lessons this year.