Strong season for Lady Bobcats

The Superior girls started the volleyball season off with a bang. On Saturday, they won their first tournament of the season at Troy where they battled against Troy, Thompson Falls and Noxon for the tournament win.

“Its’ nice to start the season coming off of a big win like a tournament,” said Kinzie Cox, head coach. “We were pretty excited.”

The team played against Noxon first and won both of the games. Then it was on to Troy, where the girls lost the first game, but came back to win the second game.

They took two game wins against Thompson Falls next before being seeded against Noxon, whom they beat.

Troy won against Thompson Falls and played against Superior for the title, but the Lady Bobcats held out and took the victory. They defeated the host 20-10 and 20-16 in the title match of the four-team event.

“It was a really good tournament,” Cox said. “Everybody was pretty closely matched. I was very pleased with our offense. We’re just starting to learn different kinds of sets and options and when the girls didn’t make it on the first attempt they went after it again and got it the second time around.”

Cox said that two other things also stood out in the tournament. Despite having trouble getting the girls to be loud on the court in practice, during the tournament they were.

“We got lots of compliments for being upbeat and intense,” Cox said.

Cox noted that she felt that the girls did a great job whenever they found themselves in a hole. She said that rather than worry about, they pulled together and worked their way out if it.

“Whenever we started finding ourselves in a hole, they didn’t worry,” Cox said.

Cox said that she felt like their offense was right there throughout the whole tournament.

She said that the team didn’t get to do a lot of blocking, but mentioned it’s not something that they have been working on in practice a whole lot.

The next week, the girls won their first home game against St. Ignatius, winning three out of five games.

“They didn’t put any pressure on each other. We’d be down a few points and find out way back. In the last game, we were down, but we just went on a streak and won,” Cox said.

Then up at Deer Lodge, the Lady Bobcats ended up facing a loss, losing three matches in a row.

Cox said that she really believed that the girls were still a bit worn from the game against Mission. Also, school started the same week as well.

“I think we were still tired from mission,” Cox said. “We played five games in a row against them. And every single game (against Deer Lodge) they were in a tired zone. But it was good in a sense that we know now what Deer Lodge is like and next time around we’ll definitely be ready to come away with a win.”

The girls were winning again this time against Darby. Cox said she felt the girls were beginning to realize just how capable they were.

“I think girls are realizing that our game is a lot higher than it was last year and are starting to realize how capable they are to win however many games they want,” Cox said.

The season continued, moving fast as the team played two to three matches a week.

It wasn’t too long before the girls found themselves playing at the district level and walking away with a third place win.

The team started off with a game against Valley Christian on Thursday. They played for a full five games, winning the match 3-2.

“I think my girls were hungry and they didn’t want to lose against them again,” Cox said. “My girls came out and played well.”

The girls also won against Darby in the loser-out game of the district tournament.

“We won in four games,” Cox said. “We took the first two without really any trouble and then Darby came back really fighting for it and won. In the fourth game, it was close, point for point for point. We pulled it out.”

Volleyball divisionals were hosted in Superior and the girls were hoping for a stellar performance.

The home team played against Eureka for their first match and ended up winning the first game in a sweeping fashion.

By the second, third and fourth games, Eureka had stepped up their play and started to fight hard for the match win.

“And we hesitated a lot and that was the falling point for us,” Cox said.

Their next game was against Troy, and a spot in the consolation bracket was up for grabs with the loser leaving the competition.

Superior had beaten Troy twice during regular season play, but froze up in the divisional tournament, leaving Cox and the team wondering what might have been.

She said that it was a little disappointing finishing at divisionals with only two matches played, knowing that they could have potentially gone farther. However, Cox added that she felt the team ended the season well overall.

“Our big goal was to play at divisionals since we were hosting them and we reached it,” Cox said.

“We also wanted to play the best we could in terms of ability and the sophomores did. They ended the season playing the best games they have played. We only won two games last year and we were up to 14 this year so that’s a huge improvement,” she said.