By RAY BENTON
Leader sports editor
The only thing worse for a young volleyball team than getting blown out at home in a 7A Central match, is playing one on the road closely, only to have questionable officiating determine the outcome. Both happened to the Cabot Lady Panthers this week. On Tuesday, Cabot hosted highly-touted and tradition-rich Conway. The young Lady Panthers were overmatched and fell 25-12, 25-10 and 25-16.
“We’re steadily progressing and I think we went up a level overall this week, but we’re still just not on the level with Conway yet,” Cabot coach Deanna Campbell said.
On Thursday at Bryant, the Lady Panthers were not in it early, dropping the first game 25-9. They regrouped and battled throughout the next games, but lost both by scores of 27-25 and 25-22.
In both games, Cabot was on thewrong side of some crucial calls. Most of the calls in question were by the Bryant junior varsity player who was line judge on the Cabot side of the court.It’s common practice for a home-team player to act as line judge in a match, but volleyball is the only Arkansas Activity Association sport in which not only students, but players from one of the teams competing, can be an official.
Things usually go off without a hitch. Thursday’s game did not.
Every call that fell to the line judge on Cabot’s side, was called in. But it wasn’t just the line judge that missed things. Match point for Bryant was an obvious infraction. A Lady Hornet reached over the net and blocked a set attempt by Cabot. Of course, with sets rarely blocked, since crossing the net is an infraction, no one from Cabot was prepared to dig the block like they would have been for a blocked hit. The ball went straight down the floor on Cabot’s side, match point for Bryant.
“That one was not easy to swallow,” Campbell said. “By the third game I told them to start playing out balls. We had to because they were calling them in. And then for it to end the way it did was difficult to swallow.”
Still, Campbell says there were things her team could have done better that could have changed the outcome.
“We did not start well,” Campbell said. “We have not established a consistent level of game speed with this group. I think because we are so young, it takes us a game to see the speed and then get matched up to that. We’ve been trying to find ways to simulate the speed they play in this conference in practice. We’ve got to figure out some way to get them at that speed before they take the floor.”
It was the second-straight road match in which Cabot did not compete well in game one, then came back and battled to close finishes the rest of the match. That, in itself, is a good sign according to Campbell.
“It is good because it shows they don’t worry about what just happened and they keep playing to win,” Campbell said. “Some teams might get beat 25-9 in game one and just decide it can’t win. This group does not quit and has shown a pretty good ability to keep looking forward and not worry too much about the scoreboard.
Tactically, Campbell saw signs of improvement as well.
“We’ve been teaching them so much, and I started to see some of the things we’ve been teaching them take place on the floor against Bryant,” Campbell said. “Our net game and our defense went up. Bryant’s front row is pretty powerful, and we closed blocks much better and forced them to hit over us. We also were more creative at the net and weren’t just swinging away. We just learned some of those things in the past week, and they’re already implementing them in the game. So we’re making progress.”
The Lady Panthers are now 2-5 overall and 0-3 in conference. They host North Little Rock on Tuesday and travel to Little Rock Central on Thursday.
