Lady Cats start playoffs on sweep

SA Times - ABILENE -Here at McMurry, the Lady Cats took care of business in a hurry. The Central High School girls had a dominating start to the 5A volleyball playoffs Tuesday as they swept Mansfield Summit 25-19, 25-7, 25-13 in a bidistrict match at McMurry University that took little more than an hour to complete. It was the third opening-round playoff win in as many years for the No.8-ranked Lady Cats (35-5) and sets up an area round contest against Lubbock Coronado (27-13) Saturday at 2 p.m. at Big Spring Middle School. The Lady Cats never trailed in any game Tuesday and other than starting 0-0 at the beginning of each game the score was never even tied.

Central's junior middle blocker Kaitlyn Standard had a shorter way of describing it all. "We really kicked butt," Standard said. And really, that's what this was. The Lady Cats didn't have a single serve-receive error. Alyssa Riddle at one time served 12 straight points. Seemingly everything that came Lyric Ross' way, she was putting down for a kill, en route to a team-high 14. Standard led the team in blocks with four. Ashley Darby had a team-high 20 digs. Regan Darby had 31 assists and Stacy Teston led the team in aces with three. "We came out strong, and we stayed strong," said Central's Stephanie Starnes, who tallied six kills. "It's a good warm-up for Saturday."

Central hasn't won an area-round playoff match since the 1984 Lady Cats team made it to the state semis. The Lady Cats have also lost in area each of the past two seasons, but if Tuesday was any indication, Coronado will have its hands full with this year's Central team. "We came out really excited and just played our game," Standard said. The opening game Tuesday was characterized by a balanced Central attack. The Game 2 highlight was the serving of Riddle, who turned an 11-4 Central lead into a 23-4 one. "I was really nervous but I just remembered to stay focused, get it over, try to place it, and it worked out," said Riddle, a junior, who was one of the few Lady Cats that hadn't played in a postseason match before.

"She can rip them off," said Bozarth of Riddle's serving. "I tell you, she's definitely a great server. She's got a lot of movement on her serves and they are tough to track." In Game 3, it was the Central defense that shined, as the Lady Cats were digging almost everything Summit threw at them. "We were just really solid today," said Bozarth, who had a fully rested team that hadn't played in a week. "I thought defensively we made some good plays. I thought we passed really well. Any time you get out of a match with no serve-receive errors you've done a good job. "I thought we did a good job of talking on the court and seeing the holes on the other side and taking advantage of them." By contrast, serve-receive problems were at the top of Summit's list of woes Tuesday.

"We didn't serve receive well and that's the thing we knew we had to do well," Summit head coach Linda Alfaro said. "When you don't serve receive well you put yourself on the defensive. They are a really good team. They have a lot of experience on the floor and it showed." Every spike by the Lady Cats seemed to echo the same message here at Kimbrell Arena as it pounded off the floor -specifically, ''See you again soon." Kimbrell will be the site of the regional tournament in a week and a half. The Lady Cats would qualify to come back here with two more playoff wins. "Heck yeah, we'd love to come back," Bozarth said. "We could call this place home without any trouble."