GARDEN CITY — The season has just begun, and the youthful Great Bend High School Lady Panthers are already showing some teeth.
Perhaps fangs.
Great Bend couldn’t hit on all cylinders during a two-set loss to Garden City, 25-16, 25-16, but the Lady Panthers roared back to topple Liberal, 25-19, 24-26, 25-20.
“One thing I saw with them is that they were furious when they lost, they were very upset with themselves and I didn’t have to say much,” GBHS head coach Kelsey Perry said. “They knew what they had to do against Liberal, and they played much better.”
Great Bend’s record stands at 3-1 on the young season.
“Garden is a very good team,” Perry said. “They have beaten Salina Central already this season and they took Newton to three sets, so we knew it was going to be a tough match. We just had too many errors, 14 unforced errors, on our part and let ourselves get into a hole.
“Each game, we got down five or six points right out of the gate and that’s really hard on the varsity level to come back from. We’ve just got to clean things up from Garden, and the girls understand that. We play them when it matters is in the WAC tournament a couple months down the road.”
Perry singled out the play on Thursday of juniors Hannah Hildebrand and Kylee Spray.
“Hannah really played great, hitting 100 percent through the Liberal match,” Perry said, “and Kylee played a tremendous back row at libero.”

                                                   — Mack McClure

Garden City 2, Great Bend 0
(25-16, 25-16)

GBHS statistics
Hannah Hildebrand — 4 kills, 1 block, 1 dig
Tarynn Stueder — 1 ace, 2 digs, 10 assists
Kylee Spray — 1 ace, 7 digs
Kelsie Doll — 2 kills, 1 digs
Kaylie Doll — 1 kill, 3 digs, 1 block
Brenna Haines — 3 kills, 0 blocks, 1 aces, 3 digs
Bonny Boultinghouse — 3 kills, 1 ace, 4 digs
Selam Ball — 2 digs

Great Bend 2, Liberal 1
(25-19, 24-26, 25-20)

GBHS stats
Stueder — 1 kill, 2 digs, 20 assists, 3 aces
Spray — 2 kills, 1 ace, 18 digs
Liz Barber — 1 ace, 1 dig
Kelsie Doll — 3 kills, 3 digs
Kaylie Doll — 2 kills, 1 block, 1 ace, 5 digs, 2 assists
Hildebrand — 4 kills
Haines — 9 kills, 3 block, 4 digs
Taylor Fry — 1 kill
Boultinghouse — 2 kills, 1 ace, 2 digs
Ball — 5 digs