Everything was clicking for the Lady Aces, cruising to a 3-0 (25-19, 25-17, 25-21) sweep over Owensboro to win their third straight 9th District Championship on Wednesday evening.
“We showed who we really are and finally played a solid game,” Owensboro Catholic head coach Brian Hardison said. “Owensboro is going to be hard to beat no matter what. We played solid volleyball, and everyone was on fire.”
In the first set, the Lady Aces jumped out to a 10-5 lead, before Owensboro scored three quick points to cut the lead to two. From there, Owensboro Catholic went on an 11-3 run to take a commanding 21-13 lead. Refusing to back down, Owensboro responded with a 6-0 run leading to the Lady Aces taking a timeout. Coming out of the stoppage in play, Owensboro Catholic was able to close it out to take a 1-0 lead.
The Lady Aces jumped out to an early lead in the second set and were able to comfortably close it out to set up match point. The third set was neck and neck with the two teams tied late, but the Lady Aces were able to pull away down the stretch for the sweep.
Olivia Castlen led the way for the Lady Aces, recording a game-high 25 kills, while adding two blocks, and two service aces. The duo of Mayme Powell and Resse Keller finished with 28 assists each, while Andi Davis posted 25 digs.
For the Lady Devils, Ayrish Barksdale led the team with 11 kills and added four digs, and three service aces. Ava Fincher finished with 17 assists, seven digs, and four kills, while Rose Larsen recorded nine digs and five kills.
“It definitely wasn’t our night,” Owensboro head coach Melissa Hibbs said. I felt like Catholic covered the floor pretty well and we just made a lot of unforced errors that were uncharacteristic of us. We missed some serves at pivotal points in the game when coming back and swung at a lot of balls out of bounds. We have somewhere to go to work tomorrow and we will bounce back.”
Both the Lady Aces and Owensboro advanced to the 3rd regional tournament, with the draw occurring on Saturday afternoon and the first round beginning Monday at McLean High School.
“The region is wide open, and teams have a hard time beating us in five sets,” Hardison said. “Our girls are conditioned, and that is on them, to be able to withstand long games and keep going after our opponents.
