Lady Bears fall short of L&C Conference finals

HOMER — Laurel-Concord-Coleridge battled to the end, but came up just short of a trip to the Lewis and Clark Conference volleyball finals, dropping a semifinal match to Wynot 25-23, 25-18, 16-25, 16-25 and 10-15.

The Lady Bears won the first two sets, but the Lady Blue Devils came charging back to take sets three and four to force the sprint to 15 in set five.

Laurel-Concord-Coleridge came up short and was set to play in a consolation match on Oct. 17.

Earlier in the tournament, the Lady Bears got by Homer, Ponca and Creighton to arrive on the edge of the finals.

Statistics were not available for the matches with Homer and Wynot at press time, but will be published in next week’s Laurel Advocate.

On the first night of the tournament, Laurel-Concord-Coleridge swept Ponca 25-17 and 25-14 and defeated Creighton in straight sets, 25-9 and 25-16.

In the match with the Lady Bulldogs, Rena Rasmussen led the Lady Bear attack with seven winners in the best-of-three-sets match.

Rasmussen also made some hay at the service line with five ace serves.

Carlie Kvols had 14 set-assists and Mallory Eriksen registered eight effective passes.

Tali Erwin had eight digs and Kvols and Rasmussen each had a block.

In the other match on opening night, the Lady Bears had turned away the Lady Indians to move on in the tournament.

Eriksen led the offense with 10 kills in the match; Rasmussen added eight and rifled four ace serves.

Kvols distributed 27 assists. Avery Hahne had eight successful passes.

Eriksen had eight digs in the match, Kvols had seven and Erwin had six.

Earlier in the week, Laurel-Concord- Coleridge swept Winnebago in Laurel 25-3, 25-13 and 25-7 in the best-of-five-sets regular-season conference match and turned away Cedar Catholic on the road, 25-19, 12-25, 25-18, 15-25 and 15-7.

The Lady Bears had little trouble with Winnebago; in fact, the Lady Indians failed to reach 25 points total in the three sets played on Oct. 12.

Against the Lady Trojans on Oct. 10, Laurel-Concord-Coleridge jumped out to take the opening set, fell in set two and responded to take set three, but Cedar Catholic took set four to force set five, during which the Lady Bears prevailed by the 15-7 score.

Laurel-Concord-Coleridge was set to take a 22-9 record into a consolation match in the conference tournament.