Lady Cats end season at regional tournament

by Karissa Williams

The season came to an end for the Lady Cats at the 3A regional tournament in Lander after they fell to Mountain View on Friday with scores of 13-25, 17-25, 8-25 and then to Pinedale on Saturday with scores of 12-25, 17-25, 20-25. The Lady Cats had a year of improvement, but just couldn’t pull it all together at regionals to earn a ticket to the State tournament.

When asked, coach Shannon Hill said about the weekend, “We knew going into the Mountain View game that this would be a tough match for us playing the #1 team in 3A. Mountain View is very fundamentally sound with their serving and passing and served us tough. I felt we did a good job of holding back their best outside hitter and in game two, if we hadn’t missed 6 serves, we could’ve taken that one. We were tied 17-17 at one point and we forced them to call a timeout, unfortunately after that, we couldn’t catch a break and ended up losing 25-17. After that, we lost our momentum in game 3.

She continued, “In the Pinedale game, this was a frustrating match because I knew we could play with Pinedale and at the beginning of every set, we were point for point with them but we would get stuck in a rotation with one server and all of a sudden they were up 4-5 points and we couldn’t dig ourselves out of it. I had to switch up our lineup and our defense a little in games two and three and was proud of how the girls stepped into those positions and adjusted, but we just could never get in our rhythm. Pinedale shut Ina down pretty good and that took away a lot of our offense.”

Coach Hill said “Even though this weekend didn’t turn out the way we planned and wanted it to, I am so proud of this team and the work and dedication they put into the season. This is the most competitive we have been in this conference and I’m proud of the girls for stepping up to the challenge of taking to these big 3A teams. We were successful in meeting some of our own goals for the season and are losing 3 dynamic seniors. Next season will be tough and we will miss Brooklynn’s random dance moves and singing voice, Ina’s assistance to Brooklynn’s dance moves and hilarious questions and I’ll miss Dazlynn looking at me and saying ‘We are good Coach.’ The underclassmen have a ton of potential and we look forward to working towards state next year.”

The team is grateful for coaches, Shannon Hill, Larry Alwin and Erika Pehringer, for all the time and dedication that went into the coaching the girls this season.

The senior girls say they will miss coach Hill’s “hilarious kick she does when she is upset and being able to show off their sweet dance moves.”