WHEATLAND – The Lady Bulldogs were part of the fight against breast cancer with their solidarity in donning the pink jerseys along with conference rival, Burns.
They also battled each other and came up short 25-21, 25-14 and 25-22. It was a game of inches and a constant back and forth with several lead changes throughout the match. The Bulldogs seemed to be gambling with the backlines and sidelines and were coming close, but the line judges flags just kept popping up while Bulldog shots were just outside the lines.
On the other side, Burns was just inside the lines. Volleys, digs and dives brought cheers from both the orange crowd and the blue crowd as many times, the play would go back and forth with everyone holding their breath waiting for a team to make a mistake.
Once again senior Kaycee Hockley and Hadley Paisley were the power leaders getting the ball back time and time again. Sets which were a result of well-placed Burns’ dinks and dunks left some of the Bulldog spikers too far from the net on the attack and Burns more often than not was able to recover.
Two emotional games in two nights brought the Lady Bulldogs face to face with their conference rivals, the Torrington Trailblazers. Although the Blazers have a record of only 6-14, they are peaking at the right time, having beaten Buffalo a week ago, Wheatland Friday night and Rawlins Saturday.
The intensity of the rivalry brought out some excellent play from both sides. Torrington came out firing and was fierce in defending the net and powerful in delivering their kills. The Lady Bulldogs were searching for the right chemistry and in a back-and-forth game, the Bulldogs put up a tremendous rally toward the end of game one, but fell two points short, 25-23.
In game two it seemed as the Bulldogs were waning in the battle for intensity and a bit out of sync, they were playing from a handful of points behind. The dropped game two 25-20.
Bringing in Anna Matthews to help defend the net in game two led to some strategy changes for head coach Lindsay Schaffner who started to chart some chinks in the Torrington armor. The Bulldogs came out strong, cut the shots off at the net with some intense blocking by Ashlynn Huffer and Brinley Heimsoth.
That left the door open for the back setters to get the ball closer to the net where Paisley, Hockley, Matthews and Alley Gunter could capitalize with a power game of their own. The Lady Bulldogs were up 9-22 before Torrington made a bit of a run at the end to make it interesting. Set to the Bulldogs 16-25.
The Bulldogs continued their intensity through the fourth game and again led from start to finish 15-25.
In a heated fifth set, Torrington once again caught fire and raced to the finish line without looking back. They won that set 15-9.
“The girls continue to fight and work hard day in and day out,” head coach Lindsay Schaffner said. “Two disappointing losses for sure. We need to regroup and start to focus on the end of our season. We need to focus on the passing and serving game. We have been outplayed in that area that last couple of matches. We also need to continue to work on hitting efficiency. None of our hitters had a positive hitting percentage in the last two matches. That is something we really stress. We will continue to work on all of these areas as we prepare for our last regular season match and the regional tournament.”
Stats leaders as submitted for the two-match week: kills - Paisley – 13, blocks - Hockley – 4, aces - Hiemsoth – 7, digs - Gunter – 21.
