Lady Bucs hold off Grace in 5-A final

Arkansas-SEMO Live Blog

When assessing his team's performance Thursday after it won the District 5-A high school volleyball championship, Boyd-Buchanan coach Alfie Dodd said: "They didn't let mistakes get to them."

The Lady Buccaneers overcame themselves and opponent Grace Academy to win the title 3-0 at Grace Academy. Set scores were 25-18, 26-24, 25-21.

Both teams advance to the Region 3 tournament, which begins Monday at Boyd-Buchanan. The first semifinal is Lookout Valley (18-4) against Boyd-Buchanan (29-14) at 6 p.m., followed by Grace Academy (17-14) against District 6 champion Sale Creek (29-20) at 7. The championship match will be Tuesday at 6.

The Lady Bucs, state runners-up in 2012 and accustomed to recent success at the district level, got to the championship match by defeating Arts & Sciences on Tuesday.

"We played very bad compared to our first-round match against CSAS," Dodd said. "Even though Grace is a talented team, we had 18 hitting errors and 11 service errors and still won."

The Lady Golden Eagles are at the other end of the spectrum as a program just now beginning to challenge for a region-tournament berth and possible district title. Krissy Aruca, who contributed nine digs in the match, is Grace's only senior.

"For many of these girls it was the first time they played for a championship in anything," Grace coach Hillary Waters said. "There was a lot of pressure, a lot of nervousness and a lot of anxiety. I'm very proud of my girls. They played hard."

Waters said she felt her players came ready to play from the start and it showed throughout the match. The Lady Bucs didn't pull away in the first set until scoring the final five points.

The second proved to be the pivotal set, which featured a largest lead of 13-10 by Boyd-Buchanan and 14 ties -- the last at 24. That's when Waters used her first timeout, and a point later used her second.

"We were really trying to focus on our game," she said of her messages during the timeouts. "We needed to get our heads in the game. I was trying to release some pressure off the girls."

But the Lady Golden Eagles never got the chance at a rally because Asia Kirkman served an ace after each timeout and ended the set. Kirkman also led Boyd-Buchanan in kills on the night with 10.

"It's called feeding the monster," Dodd said of Kirkman's hitting performance. "That's what we did."

Tournament most valuable player Katie DeLay was the Lady Bucs' digs leader with 19, and she matched Kirkman with three aces. Kristen Reynolds led in aces with five and assists with 13 and added eight kills.

Alexandra Smith topped Grace with 13 kills and 23 digs. Lexi Horne led in assists with 27, and Autumn Parrott had three blocks.

Contact Kelley Smiddie at ksmiddie@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6653. Follow him at twitter.com/KelleySmiddie.

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