Lady Tigers season comes to an end at regionals

ST. REGIS – The St. Regis Lady Tiger’s volleyball season came to an end last weekend during the regional tournament.

The two games were hard fought. The game on Friday was against Manhattan Christian. While the girls played strong, they wound up losing in four sets. The set scores were all across the board and both teams held decisive leads in the first two sets. The second two sets were much closer.

According to Head Coach Jennifer Pruitt, the girls were somewhat intimidated in the first set and were not playing their best. After the set, the team pulled back and won a set. The next two sets were lost, but were hard fought sets with close scores.

“The second game, when they came out [the girls] looked like a regular volleyball team,” said Pruitt.

Pruitt said many of the girls had picked up a head cold and were sick during the game. While they played strong, they were not quite themselves.

According to Pruitt, junior Gabby Moeller got nine kills. She said the whole team got 80 digs and senior Arianna Jones had 27. Further stats for most of the game were unavailable because Pruitt had not received the list from official stat takers.

The game on Friday was the loser out bracket against Drummond. The Lady Tigers were defeated in three sets and eliminated from the tournament.

The game was very close with neither side gaining a decisive lead at the end. The Lady Tigers had 19 kills, eight of which Moeller made. She also made the game’s only block of the game. Jones got 21 of the 76 digs as well as both aces. She also mentioned freshman Madison Hill for 13 of the 15 assists.

According to Pruitt, the girls played better than they had in the first match, but were unable to pull together and recover from low spirits left from the first game.

Pruitt said she was disappointed to be eliminated from Regionals, but added how she had seen “leaps and bounds” of improvement over the team’s performance last year. She was proud of the accomplishments and happy of how the team did.

“They should not be hanging their heads by any means,” Pruitt said. “I’m excited with how well they’ve done.”

According to Pruitt, several members of the team will be on the girl’s basketball team. While some of the girls are not basketball players, she said Moeller, Jones and Hill would be on the team as well as approximately seven other girls. Pruitt expects there will be a good basketball team this year.

Pruitt hopes to return to coach volleyball next year and said St. Regis has a good program going. She was excited to participate and wanted to see where the team would go.

“It’s going to be exciting the next couple years,” she said.