The McCracken County Lady Mustangs have a unique way of getting and staying focused in the middle of a volleyball match. While most teams talk strategy and game plans during timeouts, the Lady Mustangs add Pictionary into their timeout routines to clear their heads, especially when things aren’t going quite right for them.
That was the case early in match Monday night when they hosted Owensboro in the first round of the state volleyball tournament.
Owensboro got up to an early 5-0 lead and improved to 8-2 before a McCracken head coach Chancie Coleman called timeout.
“My message to them was that they needed to calm down,” Coleman said. “Especially with a team that’s as young as we are, I think our nerves got to us a lot. I think in those first six points we had five errors and that’s just not the way we play. So we brought them in, played Pictionary and told them to relax. It still took them a minute, but they finally got into their groove and they started play their game.”
An ace by Owensboro’s Anna Travis made it a 9-2 game after the break, but strong kills from Elizabeth Gilbert brought the deficit to 11-7, forcing a Red Devil timeout.
Owensboro would maintain their lead until the 17-17 mark after short runs would get them up by three or four points, but the Lady Mustangs would always hang around. McCracken County’s first lead of the night came at 18-17and would start to climb from there.
A kill followed by an ace from Addison Hart made it a 22-19 game and the Lady Mustangs would put it away 25-21.
The second set started much more evenly matched as the score the entire way never spread by more than three points until the end.
Owensboro would put up strong position at the net, building solid walls to earn points, forcing the Lady Mustangs to be a little more strategic in their ball placement. The Red Devils would find the most significant lead of the set at 14-11 before a McCracken timeout.
That moment to regroup seemed to pan out for the Lady Mustangs as they came out with a Gilbert kill followed by a Reagan Hill attack. The score knotted up at 16 to start a more intense back-and-forth battle that ended with a 25-18 set win capped off by an emphatic Hart kill.
McCracken started out much more confident in the third set.
“Getting up early there was key for us,” Coleman said. “That was one of the points we stressed, was coming out strong from the beginning so we weren’t chasing ourselves the whole time. Obviously that didn’t work out as well as we wanted in the first and second sets, but by the third set they had really found their rhythm.”
Taylor Dugan started off serving, helping the Lady Mustangs to a 4-1 lead, but Owensboro stayed with it as block by Ayrish Barksdale tied things up 4-4. Another even score at 6-6 would be the last close score as the Lady Mustangs put a lot of effort into their attack with kills from Elizabeth Gilbert, Emily Hatfield and Addison Hart making it a 17-6 game.
They would hold the pressure after an Owensboro timeout and go on to run away with a 25-8 final set score to sweep the Red Devils.
McCracken (35-5) advances to the second round where they will take on Assumption (32-8) on Friday afternoon at George Rogers Clark High School in Winchester, Kentucky.