Menu
Hume captures fourth straight conference title
Nevada Daily Mail
WALKER ---- The Hume Hornets dominant conference run continues.
The Hume volleyball team (14-2, 5-0) won its fourth consecutive conference championship, and fifth in the past six years, by defeating the Bronaugh Wildcats 25-16, 25-22 in the Golden Valley Vernon County Conference championship match, Saturday.
"Especially for the five seniors that I have, this win means a lot to them," Hume coach Delanya Thompson said. "They're really excited and this is the goal we've had all season long.
"That's what we started with, playing to win this conference."
Pool A winners bracket
Some luck was required for the top seeded Hornets to reach the title bout, as they narrowly escaped the host school, fourth-seeded Northeast Vernon County Knights in the second round of pool play.
For the early matches, only two sets were played. In the pool A winners bracket, the Hornets downed the Knights in the first set 25-19, but fell in the second set 25-20.
The first tiebreaker officials went to was margin of victory. And Hume won that by one point, to advance to the championship match.
Knights coach Erica Mott said she was disappointed her team lost the tiebreaker, but was thrilled with their performance.
"We came back, we all played together and were doing what we were supposed to be doing," she said. "It's like everything just clicked.
"The one (tiebreaker)point it came down to, that's too bad," she said. "But, it was nice to finally see the girls come together and play like I know they could.
Mott said the team's performance against Hume, was possibly their best of the season.
"They were talking, hitting, passing, and finally being aggressive," she said. "And it was good to finally see it all at once instead of separated."
In the third place match, the Knights were defeated by Miami 25-23, 25-18.
Pool B winners bracket
In the pool B winners bracket, the No. 2 seed Bronaugh Wildcats, after beating the No. 6 seed Sheldon Panthers in the 8:30 a.m. game in two sets, thumped No. 3 seed Miami 25-15, 25-18.
"We passed really well and got a lot of kills in the first game," Bronaugh coach James Frank said after the Miami match. "In the second game, they got up on us. But we came back from behind."
Frank said he was impressed with the play of sophomore libero Kailey Harrell.
"She had another really good service performance," he said. "She got us five or six points and brought us back even with them in the second set. And then we won the last eight."
After a mediocre performance against Sheldon, Frank said his team improved by leaps and bounds in the Miami game.
"It was a huge improvement," he said.
Frank said Bronaugh capitalized on the size advantage they held over Miami.
"Miami doesn't really have an adequate blocker to go against our big players," he said. "So if we can get sets at the net and good swings we can do some damage.
"And we were really doing that well in the first game. But in the second game we were struggling to get the pass up. But once we did we played a lot better."
Championship match
Prior to the late afternoon championship match against Hume, Frank discussed what his team needed to do in order to come away with the win.
"We need to avoid big service runs by them," he said. "Because they won't make service mistakes. They'll make you come and beat them out of points.
"And I really respect that. They put it in play, they hit it hard. And so that's where they've beaten us every time they've played us.
"If we can't stay on top of them and make good passes, and get swings at the net ---- they'll make you pay. And that's the key for us right there, serve-receive, solid passing, and then just hope that we can win points at the net more than they can.
"If we do those things we have a chance. They're really consistent and they play hard. We'll have to play well to beat them."
In the title match, Hume jumped out to leads of 11-5 and 16-11 in the first set.
After scoring four straight points to slice the lead to 16-15, a double block at the net fell Hume's way, which seemed to turn the momentum back in the Hornets favor.
Later, Hume senior Emily Ward came through with an ace, to put the Hornets up 19-15.
The Wildcats would get no closer than 20-16, as the Hornets reeled off the final five points of the set, with junior Megan Sutcliffe serving to close things out.
"The first game went a lot smoother than the second game," Thompson said. "We served well and played well as a team."
After taking an early 3-2 lead in the second set, Bronaugh quickly found themselves trailing 11-7.
The Wildcats picked up consecutive points, the first via a Harrell ace, to cut the lead to 11-9.
From that point, the Hornets went on a tear, grabbing nine of the next 10 points, to take a commanding 20-10 lead.
After getting down double-digits, the Wildcats responded with a 7-1 run.
Bronaugh came within a point at 23-22, courtesy of a Katey Rider kill.
The Hornets regrouped, and took the final two points to close out the match, and in the process winning the conference tournament title.
"We got ahead in the second game, but we just kind of lost our cool there for a while and they came back," Thompson said. "But they pulled it together.
"I don't think that anyone stood out. I think that we just worked well as a team."
Frank said that his team made too many mistakes to overcome, against an opponent the caliber of Hume.
"They eventually started to pull away," he said. "And in each game we couldn't stop their service runs. We knew that was what we needed to do, and we just didn't execute.
"We just go into a portion of each match where we were doing stuff without a purpose. We were just scrambling around, trying to keep the ball in play."
"We made a great comeback there at the end. It was a good effort, but the little things kind of killed us."
Frank said he was pleased with the play of his two seniors.
"We really got into two good serving rotations there at the end," he said. "And those were our two seniors (Martell Moore and Lora Shaw) on the line there at the end. They were the ones who served us back into the game.
"You could tell they wanted it, and they rolled off some aces there and there was some heat on those. Martell played great, played hard the whole way."
Hume gets one last tuneup before district play, as they take the court Wednesday at 5:30 p.m., for a non-conference home matchup against Rich Hill.
Also gearing up for district play, Bronaugh squares off today at home, against Sheldon.
Tournament scores
(In order of time played).
Pool B: Bronaugh over Sheldon 25-22, 25-18.
Pool A: Hume over Ballard 25-15, 25-12.
Pool B: Miami over Sheldon 25-15, 25-8.
Pool A: NEVC over Ballard 25-12, 25-11.
Pool B: Bronaugh over Miami 25-15, 25-18.
Pool A: Hume over NEVC 25-19, 25-20. (Hume wins on tiebreaker).
Fifth place match: Sheldon over Ballard 25-21, (25-23), 15-13.
Third place match: Miami over NEVC 25-23, 25-18.
First place match: Hume over Bronaugh 25-16, 25-22.