Lady Cats on the road this week

by Karissa Nichols

With only three weeks left of the regular season, the Lady Bobcats Junior varsity and Varsity teams traveled to Powell to take on the South teams in the 3A West conference. 

The Lady Cats faced off against Lander and Lyman on Friday and got back on the bus Saturday morning to go to Powell to take on Mountain View and Pinedale. The Lady Cats needed to dig deep this week and play good solid volleyball with minimal errors in order to pull off some wins. The Cats weren’t able to win any matches over the two days, but they had moments where they worked hard and showed that they had the potential to get some wins. Unfortunately, the Lady Cats made too many errors and let the wins slip out of their hands. To start the tournament off, the JV team lost in two and the Varsity lost in 3 with scores of 18-25, 21-25, 17-25.  When competing against Lyman, the JV team took them to three games but couldn’t finish for a match win with scores of 18-25, 25-15 and 4-15. The varsity team lost in three games to Lyman posting scores of 15-25, 17-25 and 14-25.  

Day two of the conference duals brought a tough Mountain View team to start the day for the Lady Cats. The JV team fought hard but ended up losing in two games with scores of 19-25 and 23-25.  As far as the Varsity Lady Cats, they showed they could compete with Mountain View but couldn’t maintain the fight for all three sets. The Lady Cats were able to showcase their hitting ability at the net to keep the Lady Buffaloes on their toes.  Scores against Mountain View were 17-25, 13-25 and 13-25. The final matches of Saturday came against the Lyman Lady Eagles. The JV girls kept up with them but then let the Lyman team run away with both games posting scores of 17-25 and 18-25. The Lady Cats Varsity team walked onto the court against Lyman like they had something to prove but unforced errors ended up creating a loss of 20-25 in the first set for the Lady Cats. The next two sets, the Lady Cats struggled and were down 0-8 at one point and just couldn’t get their momentum back. They finished off the match with scores of 8-25 and 12-25. 

Stats for the weekend include the following:

Lexi Garrison- 1 block

Hannah Hill- 25 kills, 5 serve aces

Kali Simeral- 8 kills, 1 block

Brooklynn Williams- 5 kills, 2 serve aces, 1 block

Ina King- 19 kills, 7 blocks, 1 serve ace

Dazlyn Hunt- 2 kills

Tensie Verhasselt- 5 kills, 3 blocks

Jayssie Owsley- 8 kills, 2 serve aces

When asking Junior Varsity coach, Larry Alwin what his comments on the weekend were, he stated “Both Varsity and JV struggled with the South half of our conference at the conference duals, only able to pick off a set here or there. Up by the boot straps this week as we travel to Lovell Thursday and host a tough Powell team Friday.” 

Varsity Coach Shannon Hill stated “The conference dual weekend is always a good weekend to get a taste of what regionals will be like as far as competition goes. We switched rotations on Thursday, so finding our groove this weekend was tough but I feel good about where it’s going to lead us by tournament time.”

The Freshman Lady Cats had a busy week as they hosted Wyoming Indian on Tuesday and traveled to Lander on Thursday. Coach Erika Pehringer said, “The freshman had two great matches this week against Wyoming Indian and Lander. We won in two sets against Wyoming Indian and the girls were able to get some big swings against them due to some awesome serve receive.” 

Pehringer added, “We lost to Lander in two sets, 25-11 and 25-14.  Even though we lost, I saw a lot of really good things from all of them, and look forward to seeing their energy help them in next week’s matches.”

The Lady Cats will have to regain their focus and want to win some volleyball games this upcoming week as they wind down their season. The Lady Cats travel to Lovell on Thursday and then take on a top ranked Powell team at home on Friday.  Game times on Thursday and Friday are freshman at 4 p.m., JV at 5 p.m. and Varsity at 6 p.m.