Red Devils lose 3-2 heartbreaker to Labette

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Sports

August 28, 2014 - 12:00 AM

Allen Community College’s women’s volleyball team lost for the first time in a heartbreaking five-set match to the Labette Community College Cardinals Wednesday.
 The match was also ACC’s first league loss on the young season. The Red Devils are 1-1 overall and 0-1 in Jayhawk Conference play.
“It will be a long season if we decide to settle,” coach Jessica Peters said. “One of our girls made the point in the locker room that we put ourselves in position to be in the chase game. We would do what we needed to do to tie it back up, but we would just be OK with getting ourselves back in the game and not doing what we needed to do to end the game. Really, that’s coming from them.”
The Red Devils won the first set, 26-24. With the score 11-9, Allen went on a three-point rally to take a 14-9 lead. After switching points to put the score at 15-10, Labette rallied for five straight to tie the set. ACC answered back with a six-point rally to take the 21-15 advantage. With Allen leading 24-19, needing one point to win the first set, the Cardinals scored five points to tie the contest. ACC escaped the first set with the next two points to win.
The second match resulted in the Cardinals securing a 25-20 win. Labette started off with a four-point rally to take the lead and never gave it up. With the score 19-11 in favor of LCC, the Red Devils put together a 7-point run to get within 19-18. That was close as Allen got, however, as Labette closed out the set.
Labette went on to win the third set as well, 26-24, starting with a 5-0 lead. At 22-19, Allen scored the necessary three points to tie, but again Labette fended off the challenge.
Allen never trailed in the third set, a 25-22 win. The Red Devils scored four of the last five points after the teams were tied, 21-21.
The fifth-set tiebreaker followed, with the winning team needing to score only 15.
Allen looked to have control, leading 7-3 at one point, but Labette responded once again.
The Cardinals outscored Allen 12-6 down the stretch. The match point was an ace serve.
“That was clearly an ace, our serve reception error, but it was a great serve,” Peters said. “I thought it was going out, but it was going to be so close, it probably would have hit. I would rather us make the mistake than let the ball fall.”
The team’s hitting percentage fell to .172 tonight. In Monday’s victory, Allen’s hit .219 as a team.
The team had 47 kills over the five sets. Setter Raquel West had 24 assists, while Madi Maguire had 13, which was five fewer than Monday. Sarah Webb hit .455 and had 10 kills. Andonae Magdziarz had 12 kills.
“It might be OK to suffer a heartbreak like that, especially in five sets by two points this early in the season,” Peters said. “The point we just made to Labette is we need to learn from this. We put ourselves in this position and we know we don’t want to see ourselves there again.”
Allen’s next game is the border war at Neosho County next Wednesday.
“I really hope we hit practice hard today and tomorrow and we come in refreshed,” Peters said.

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