Longhorns earn second seed in Saturday’s SPVA tourney

    Ready or not, the SPVA tournament is seeded and ready to go.
    The Chase County volleyball team is seeded second in the tournament and, with no games this week, will have plenty of time to fine-tune its game plan for Saturday’s tournament in Grant.
    With constant lineup adjustments, Chase County Head Coach April Lambert said its been a rocky season.
    “We need to start fresh and get solid footing with our current lineup and get some of the trust working on the court now that we have a strong combination. The girls need to  communicate, trust each other and lead to end the postseason the way we want to,” she said.
    The Longhorns will spend time this week making adjustments.
    “We need to go back to some fundamentals and clean some things up as well as get more comfortable in our offensive chemistry,” Lambert said.
    The Longhorns (13-13) are seeded second and will play seven seed Kimball (3-16). Three seed Bridgeport (11-13) will play six seed North Platte St. Pat’s (8-15). The fifth seed, PCS, will play fourth seeded Sutherland (12-12) at 10 a.m. Hershey (16-5) earned the top seed and a first round bye.
Southwest, NPSP triangular
    Chase County went 1-1 Oct. 4 in Bartley where the Longhorns crossed paths with Southwest and St. Pat’s.
    After Southwest beat NPSP in the evening’s first match, the Longhorns took on the Irish for the teams’ third meeting this season.
    Chase County jumped all over the Irish in the first set.
    “We used a new rotation for the first time for this night and against St. Pat’s it looked really solid.  The girls did a good job of serving aggressively and the work we had done on serve receive really paid off as it was one of our highest SR games all season,” Lambert said.
    St. Pat’s only held serve once in the first set and the Longhorns took a 25-12 win.
    Chase County took a 6-1 lead in the second set and never looked back, taking the match with a 25-16 win.
    The Longhorns faced a much stronger opponent in their second set. Southwest (20-4) is ranked seventh in Class C2.
    Chase County was within two points, 9-11, but gave up a 0-6 run to the Roughriders. The Longhorns dropped the set 17-25.
    The second set was similar. Tied at 9-9, Southwest went on a six-point run. This time, the Longhorns responded, tying the game at 16-16. But Chase County couldn’t get over the hump and lost the set 21-25.
    “Against Southwest, we were close, but we still have some work to do defensively with our transition into offense and getting our hitters on the net and in a position to attack the ball,” Lambert said.
    The Longhorns made good defensive adjustments during the game, but has work to do in practice to compete at that level, Lambert added.
PCS for Senior Night
    Chase County hosted Perkins County last Thursday for its annual Pink Out game and Senior Night.
    Lambert said Perkins County was very aggressive on tip and attack.  
    Balls came over the net in different ways and the Longhorns were a little slow on their feet, Lambert said.  
    CCS trailed 9-11 until a 6-0 run swung momentum back in the Longhorns’ favor. Chase County’s biggest lead was 21-14 before finishing off the Plainsmen 25-21.
    Lambert said Chase County missed five serves in the first set.
    “We had to clean that up and the girls did that well,” she said.
    The Longhorns never trailed in the second set. With the set tied at 14-14, Chase County scored six straight points and went on to win the match 25-18.
    “We are still working on our transition offense and positioning our hitters to always have a better ball to attack, so we will look to fix that before conference tournament,” Lambert said.
9/10 Quad
    The 9/10 team traveled to a quadrangular Monday in McCook.
    CCS lost to North Platte St. Pat’s 23-25, 25-18, 12-15; lost to McCook 25-23, 17-25, 9-15; and beat Sutherland 25-17, 25-13.

Up next
    Chase County’s final regular season game will be Tuesday at Hershey.
    If the point standings stay consistent, Ogallala should host the C1-12 subdistrict Oct. 24-25.
Class C1 point standings:
1. Malcolm (26-2), 46.0714
2. Minden (24-2), 45.8846
3. North Bend Central (22-0), 45.8636
4. Gothenburg (24-2), 45.6923
5. Grand Island Central Catholic (23-2),
    45.3600
6. Pierce (22-2), 45.0417
7. Douglas Co. West (22-3), 44.9200
8. Columbus Lakeview (15-6),
    44.8095
9. Kearney Catholic (19-7), 44.2308
10. Adams Central (17-6), 43.6957
11. St. Paul (20-7), 43.5185
12. Ogallala (19-9), 43.3929
13. Yutan (22-4), 43.0769
14. Syracuse (15-9), 42.6250
15. Hershey (16-5), 42.4286
16. Bishop Neumann (13-9),
    42.3636
18. Chase County (13-13), 41.8846
26. Chadron (10-15), 41.1600
32. Bridgeport (11-13), 40.6667
C1-12 Subdistrict in bold