| District
Tournament starts this week
The volleyball district tournament gets underway this week with a pair of play-in matches on Thursday, Oct. 14. The northern division fifth place team will play at the home of the southern division fourth place team and the southern fifth place team will play at the northern fourth place gym with both matches to start at 7 p.m. These will be single elimination. Nezperce, Timberline, Lapwai and Deary will be the teams involved in those matches. On Saturday the remaining 8 team will play a double elimination tournament with the top three teams all qualifying for state. Four of the matches on Saturday will take place in the southern division champion’s gym (Culdesac) while the other half will play in the northern division champion’s gym (Genesee). Prairie wound up the regular season as the third place team in the South Pod and will play Troy at 2:30 p.m. at Culdesac on Saturday. Troy was second in the North Pod. First round winners will play again at 5:30 on Saturday and first round losers will play at 4 p.m. Six teams would then advance on to action Saturday, Oct. 23 at Lewiston’s Booth Hall. Loser-out games would be at 1 p.m. and 2:30 with the winners of those games playing for third place at 4 p.m. and the championship game set for 5:30 p.m. The top 3 teams all advance to the state tournament which starts Thursday, Oct. 28 with pool play action at Burley and Declo to winnow the 16 teams down to 8 teams. Friday and Saturday’s state action is all at Declo. Lady Pirates sweep Timberline The Prairie Lady Pirates avenged an earlier loss as they swept Timberline 25-18, 25-23, 25-12 in a match at Cottonwood Tuesday, October 5. Ashley Schaeffer and Vanessa Sonnen combined for 18 kills in the match and Briget Long added 5 blocks as the Pirates picked up their second straight win. Lady Pirates lose to Culdesac The Prairie Lady Pirates still had an outside shot at winning the south division championship heading into their match with Culdesac Monday, Oct. 11, but Culdesac clinched the division crown by defeating Prairie 11-25, 20-25, 22-25 at Cottonwood. 
Prairie still has a chance at second if they were to beat Nezperce Tuesday and Highland were to lose to Timberline. They’ve clinched no worse than third place in the division heading into District. Prairie got off to a good start as Briget Long and Natalie Arnzen each scored a kill to open the match. From then on though the first game belonged to the Wolves. Culdesac scored the next 4 points to take the lead and then steadily pulled away. In the second game Arnzen started the game with a kill then served 4 straight points with 2 aces and a kill each by Long and Vanessa Sonnen for a 5-0 Prairie lead. They couldn’t hold it though as Culdesac answered with 6 straight points to take the lead. Prairie managed to tie the score at 7 but never again took the lead although they managed to keep it close. The third game saw Prairie fall behind at the start and come back to take the lead. They were down 3-4 after a missed serve but Long scored a kill on a back row spike to tie the game. Bridget Enneking then served an ace and Ashley Jackson followed with a kill for a 6-4 lead. After a missed serve Jackson scored another kill to put Randi Schumacher at the service line. A kill each from Ashley Schaeffer and Arnzen put Prairie up 9-5. That was Prairie’s high water mark for the game though as Culdesac gradually came back and took the lead for good at 14-15. Long wound up with 12 kills in the match while Arnzen had 7 kills and 3 aces, Jackson had 6 kills and Schaeffer had 5 kills including a block. Lindsey Crea had 15 assists and 3 aces while Enneking had 11 assists. The loss drops Prairie to 5-7 in league play with 1 regular season match to go. They are 7-14 overall. The JV squad won all three of their games by scores of 25-16, 25-21 and 15-11. Carolyn Sonnen got the JV off to a strong start with a 7-point serving run in the first game that was all aces and gave Prairie a 9-1 lead. They then held the lead at about 8-10 points through the rest of the game. The second game was more competitive although Prairie still led most of the way. Culdesac took the lead at 9-11 but then missed a serve and a kill by Tabitha Seubert and 2 more aces by Carolyn Sonnen put the Pirates back into a lead which they held the rest of the game. Prairie fell behind 0-2 in the third game but came back to take a 6-3 lead and held onto the lead through the end of the game. Other than the early run in the first game, Prairie didn’t put together any serving runs of more than 2 or 3 points. They just played solid defense and kept Culdesac from putting anything together and scored enough points on serve to hold onto the lead. The C team also had a straight sets win as they defeated C.V. 25-13, 25-19, 25-12. We understand the C team also competed on Saturday and beat Kendrick but lost to Deary. Scores were unavailable. |
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