By Sheila Crowley
Murray County News Sports
The Murray County Central volleyball squad has had an up and down season. Some of their best volleyball was played near the end of the season. Unfortunately, their time on the courts came to an end last Tuesday night. MCC faced the number two seeded powerful Tracy-Milroy-Balaton who has a tradition of winning. The semi-final game was exciting from the get-go with the Rebel squad. After falling 20-25 in the opening game, MCC stormed back to claim a 25-22 win. With the match tied at a game apiece, TMB claimed game three 22-25, but MCC evened the score with a 25-20 victory in game four. Tied at two games apiece forced a fifth game. Unfortunately for the Rebel squad, this didn’t end as they might have hoped with the MCC squad falling 11-15.
“The whole night our girls were right there,” said MCC coach Kate DeLong. “We did a lot of mental preparation, had a good game plan and I think we executed it well. It was a matter of who was going to finish more often and put that ball on the floor more often, and sometimes it was us and sometimes it was Tracy. In the end, it was them.”
The Panthers took an early lead in game one putting up five quick points. Little by little MCC was able to chip away the deficit with Bryn Hoekman and Amber Boock nailing their opportunities at the front line.
TMB seemed to find their rhythm again and once again put a spread between the two teams, 8-4. Emily Rohrer started the uphill climb with a slam to the floor followed by a shot from Shelby Christensen. With the game knotted at 8-8, the Panther squad put up a couple of points before the Rebel team came back to tie the game at 10-10. TMB put together a string of points to extend their lead to five 16-11 and then moved on to put up a 20-14 advantage.
The Rebels weren’t going to be denied and chipped away at the deficit one-by-one to pull within two, 19-21. However, it wasn’t quite enough with TMB going on to claim the first set, 25-20.
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