At the Great Bend High School Fieldhouse on Saturday, Dodge City successfully defended its Western Athletic Conference tournament championship after finishing with a 3-1 record.
Great Bend finished 1-3 in the pool-play format, saving its best for last in toppling Garden City in the Lady Panthers’ final match of the day, 25-19, 15-25, 25-21.
“We struggled at the beginning of the day,” Great Bend head coach Kelsey Perry said. “We don’t have a lot of consistency. We have some girls that are real good in practice and then in the games, maybe not so good.
“Finally, by the end of the day (against Garden), we found that and had some girls really step up and play great. The good thing about it is that it’s huge momentum going into next Saturday.”
Great Bend will play host to a Class 5A sub-state tournament next Saturday at the same locale. Seedings have yet to be determined.
“Ashley Boeger ended up with 12 kills today,” Perry said. “She played great in the last match. Emily Seiwert was hitting the ball really good as she ended up with 16 kills, and Liz Kutina throughout the day, led us with 25 kills.
“Liz dominated the middle.”
Perry liberally substituted in the four matches, trying to find the right combination.
“Thirteen kids got in,” she said, “and the reason for that is consistency. We don’t know game-in, game-out, who’s going to be our hitter and who’s going to do what.”
Before their impressive win over Garden, in which they won the third-and-deciding game, the Lady Panthers fell to Dodge City, Liberal and Hays in succession.
“We just had a lot of pressure on us earlier,” said Boeger, a senior. “All of the fans and everything, we were just worried about winning instead of relaxing and having fun.
“It’s a pretty good feeling (beating Garden City), since they beat us in the first match of the season. It’s pretty nice to beat them in the end, knowing we got better.”