Lady Hawks notch 2 wins in Western B volleyball

The Lady Hawks are soaring in the early going of the 2022 Montana high school volleyball season.

Thompson Falls, which went 20-5 last year and has returned a solid core from that team picked up a pair of relatively comfortable wins over Western B Conference foes, downing Florence-Carlton this past Tuesday, 3-1, then waltzing past Missoula Loyola by the same score in a pair of season opening road victories.

Their latest win was this past Thursday against the Lady Breakers in the Garden City. Thompson falls dominated the opening game, posting a 25-12 win for a 1-0 match lead in what at that point seemed like a sweep in the making.

But Loyola fought back hard in Game Two and came away with a tight-as-it-gets 25-23 win to square the match at one game each.

Thompson Falls then picked up a more comfortable win in the third game of the evening, walking away with a 25-21 win over the Lady Breakers to take a 2-1 match lead.

Behind the 15 kills recorded by senior Avery Burgess, Thompson Falls kept up the pressure and won game four 25-18 to take the match, 3-1.

In addition to Burgess’ kills, the Lady Hawks got four aces, 15 assists and nine digs from Cheyla Irvine, and four aces and three blocks from senior Ellie Baxter as the T Falls players controlled the net throughout.

T Falls had opened their season last Tuesday in strikingly similar fashion to their win over Loyola when they took an easy one game lead on Florence-Carlton, 25-14 before the Lady Falcons heated up and made a tough go of it the rest of the way.

Thompson falls battled to a 25-23 win in game two, taking a 2-0 match lead before the Lady Falcons returned the favor in the pivotal third game by sqeaking past the Lady Hawks 26-24, showing they were not giving up.

The deciding Game Four was another down to the wire affair, which eventually went T Falls’ way, 25-23, securing the 3-1 win.

Thompson Falls moved to 2-0 while the Falcons fell to 0-2 with the loss.

Burgess was again a major factor in the win over Florence-Carlton as she had another 15 kills to go with four service aces. She got big time support from Olivia Harnett, who amassed a match high 23 assists for the Lady Hawks. In addition, Natalie Roberts had 12 kills and 10 digs for T Falls in the win over the Falcons.

Thompson Falls returns home this week for a Friday night game versus Powell County, followed by a Saturday afternoon match-up with Anaconda.