By RAY BENTON
Leader sports editor
The Lady Panther volleyball team got a revenge win on Tuesday over Morrilton, but the celebration was short-lived. On Thursday, Cabot traveled to Russellville and dropped its conference opener to the Lady Cyclones.
Still, it was a positive week of play, according to Cabot coach Deanna Campbell, who said the win over a team it had previously lost to was a sure sign of improvement.
“We were able to beat them three straight, and consistency was one of our goals,” Campbell said. “We kept ourselves in the game and we wore them down.”
The three straight wins came after dropping the first set, and dropping it badly. The Lady Devil Dogs, who beat Cabot last week in the season opener, routed Cabot 25-9 in game one, but that only led to more praise from Campbell about her team’s resiliency.
“It’s easy to get discouraged and have a letdown after starting like that,” Campbell said. “These girls just battled. There were a lot of really long, long volleys. They just kept the ball alive and kept working. That showed us something about ourselves.”
Scores in the final three games were 25-22, 25-23 and 25-21. The slightly larger margin of victory in the final set was indicative of Cabot’s change in approach for that final set.
Also indicative of that change was the kill statistics. Lakin Best and Dominika Gubricova each finished with a team-high 10 kills, but half of them for each came in the deciding fourth set.
“The volleys were a little shorter in the fourth because we started playing more aggressively, and I think Morrilton got a little tired and wasn’t getting to as many balls,” Campbell said.
Campbell didn’t see a noticeable drop-off in the speed her players played with as the match progressed, which is something she was glad to see.
“This game was weird because in previous games we’ve started fast and then slowed down,” Campbell said. “This one, we started very slowly, but once we picked it up, we kept it there. So that was really good to see.”
Thursday’s match was a straight-set loss. Scores were 25-23, 25-18 and 25-11 for Russellville.
It was a match in which Campbell reminded herself that she coaches a very young team that starts and plays lots of sophomores.
“In a lot of areas, we actually did better than we had in previous matches,” Campbell said. “Russellville just plays a very fast game speed. They have a lot of seniors, some very good athletes. They’re just at a level that we’re not at yet, but we’re going to get there. This team is progressing very well.”
The difference between Russellville and Morrilton (which also has very good athletes) was Russellville’s ability to spread the ball around. Cabot began to read Morrilton well and anticipated where the hits were going. Russellville was much less predictable.
“They moved faster and they made very smart plays,” Campbell said. “We did really well in the first game, but after a while we didn’t read them very well. They didn’t just hit to the middle. They hit down the lines, to corners, and from anywhere.”
The Lady Cyclones also had a knuckle-ball server that gave Campbell’s charges fits.
“Her serve was amazing,” Campbell said. “It would skim the net and then move. She never aced us, but we weren’t able to run our offense off that. We just had to get it back over. Of course that gave them the advantage because it put us on defense.”
The Lady Panthers (2-3, 0-1) are back home for the first time in nearly two weeks when it hosts conference favorite Conway on Tuesday.
On Thursday the team travels to Little Rock Central to continue 7A-East play.
Look for details of both of those matches in Saturday’s edition of The Leader.
