By Brennan Stebbins (For OzarksSportsZone.com)
If there was a sense of déjà vu inside the Cardinal Dome on Tuesday night it was for good reason, with the Webb City and Carl Junction volleyball teams meeting in a district championship match for the sixth time in seven seasons.
And the Cardinals came away victorious for the fifth time in those matches against the Bulldogs while also notching the program’s fifth-straight district title with Tuesday’s 3-0 win in the Class 4 District 6 finals.
“It’s a crosstown rivalry but we were excited for them that they upset (Willard in the semifinals) because these kids play together outside of school ball, they play together on a lot of teams, they know each other and they’ve played against each other all year,” said Webb City coach Rhonda Lawrence. “Even though the towns are rivals, the girls still have a good respect for each other and we know they have very good players. It’s fun to play in a game like this and it helps us going on forward. We have a big crowd tonight, it’ll be a little easier and we’ll be more used to it on Saturday.”
Webb City (24-10) will face Marshfield (28-9-2) on Saturday in the quarterfinals. That’s a rematch of last year’s district championship, which the Cardinals won 3-1.
Against Carl Junction, the Cardinals have now won six straight matches and 23 of 28 sets going back even further. The third-seeded Bulldogs (16-14) were competitive in every set on Tuesday, however, after beating second seed Willard 2-0 and sixth seed Central 3-0.
The top-seeded Cardinals, who swept fifth seed Hillcrest 3-0 in the semifinals, doubled up the Bulldogs early on in each set, but the visitors found momentum each time before Webb City put them away late.
The Cardinals went on a 6-0 run early in the first set behind blocks by Kaelyn Maxwell and Savannah Crane, kills from Maxwell and Jaylee VanBecelaere and an ace from Avery Pogue. A kill by Adalyn Maxwell made it 14-5, and then Carl Junction won the next seven points with Anna Lewis serving up three aces. Carl Junction’s Madalyn Huffman cut it to 17-16 with a kill, and the Bulldogs were still within 23-21 when Webb City called a timeout and responded with a VanBecelaere kill to the back line and an Adalyn Maxwell hit to win 25-21.
Webb City led 11-5 in the second set and held a 10-point advantage (20-10) after a hit by Adalyn Maxwell. The Bulldogs cut it to 23-17 with a kill by Huffman, but VanBecelaere ended it with one of her own for the final of 25-18.
CLICK HERE FOR PHOTOS OF THE MATCH
In the deciding set, the Cardinals led 9-3 before the Bulldogs rallied to pull within 13-10. An ace by Marlee Harper gave Webb City a 15-10 lead and the team extended that to 22-14 after back-to-back kills by Kaelyn and Adalyn Maxwell. Carl Junction got within 23-17 on a hit by Jadyn Howard, and 23-18 with another from Huffman, but Webb City’s Harper and Jocelyn Maxwell teamed up for a block and the Cardinals went on to win 25-20.
“I really think it’s just our determination and the trust in each other,” Lawrence said of the team’s resiliency. “We’ve had some adversity all year long so we’ve had to play tough and really lean on each other to get through point to point. That’s during practice, we practice with those same difficult situations. I stack it against them and then I turn it around and they get to slide easy. Volleyball is a lot of turmoil, a lot of peaks and valleys. They know we can’t go peak to valley all the time, you’ve got to stay at a steady pace and expect that.”
VanBecelaere and Harper each recorded 2 aces, and Adalyn and Kaelyn Maxwell each notched 9 kills. VanBecelaere added 8 kills, Kaelyn Maxwell had 3 blocks, and Avery Gardner totaled 22 digs.
Lawrence said the fifth-straight district championship was the team’s expectation from the start of the season.
“No question about it, that was the plan from the get-go is we want our fifth district championship, we’re not going to let anybody stand in our way,” she said. “They stepped up, leaned into each other and got it done. I was very proud of them tonight. They did some things we’ve really worked on in practice to make sure we’re taking advantage of some of the weak spots and that’s volleyball, that’s what you do. When you’re training a kid and they’re soaking that up and can mix up their offense from what they normally do to make sure we get on top, that’s sold out for each other.”
At the same time, reflecting on the 5-peat “makes me emotional,” Lawrence said, “because I know of all these kids, all these seniors that were before them that really brought that same level of expectancy to each class, that’s what they wanted for the people underneath them. They’ve been such good leaders to help those younger ones come up just like you saw tonight. If you look at my lineup I don’t have all seniors, all juniors. I’ve got a lot of them but I still have people that played JV last year, they didn’t play varsity until this year. For them to step up and they know that expectation. It’s super humbling as a coach because I feel like they’ve laid it all out there not just for each other but it’s for the program because they have so much pride in the work they’ve put in for years.”
