Lady Tigers battle at home last week

The Ipswich Lady Tiger volleyball team sustained a couple of difficult homecourt defeats last week. The Lady Tigers were competitive and then some, but couldn't quite close things out, especially in a Tuesday match against a potential regional rival, Potter County. It ended up to be a 3-2 win for the visitors, thanks to their comeback from a 13-8 deficit in the tie-breaker set. Ipswich was then within an eyelash of forcing a fifth set against LRC rival Langford, but the Lions rallied for a 25-22 win of the fourth set to seal a 3-1 deal.

"I guess we aren't quite ready to get to that level, but we are getting closer," said IHS coach Trent Osborne. "We have some of the sophomores that are coming out of their shell. If we can stop shooting ourselves in the foot with unforced errors throughout matches, we can feed off momentum and finish games and matches off! Just too many give-aways at critical times against a good team!"

A bright spot in the setback to Langford was that Ipswich landed a ton of service aces. "We had to serve more aggressively last night to keep them out of system and the ball away from (Abby) Dwight," Osborne eplained. "Eleven aces was the most in a match by far, but the strategy also cost us 11 errors which happened to be at inopportune times."

In both matches, the visiting team had gotten off to a solid effort by winning its first set, forcing Ipswich to scramble back.

Potter County topped Ipswich 25-23 in their opener and also really put itself in the drivers seat with a 25-16 win of set two. But Ipswich re-grouped and battled back into contention with consecutive 25-14 and 25-20 wins to force that tie-breaker, which the visitors eventually won 15-13.

Two nights later in the Tiger Den, Langford manufactured a 25-17 win of the opening set. But Ipswich responded with a 25-20 win of the second set to even the match at 1-1. Langford would answer with a 25-21 win of the third set, though, to go ahead 2-1 and would then clinch the match with its narrow fourth-set victory.

Despite the attention, Dwight still did some damage for Langford with 26 kills among her 30 total hits in 39 tries. Altogether her team went 61-72 in hitting with 37 kills. Ipswich didn't do a bad job itself in attacking the net with an impressive 163-187 hitting effort that featured 39 kills, led by Abby Grabowska, 68-77 with 19 kills. Lindsey Grabowska was 24-30 with six kills and Heinz 21-23 with five kills. In setting things up, Halle Heinz was 80-80 with 16 assists and Bailey Pitz, 72-79 with 20 assists. Ipswich handled 174 successful setting opportunies with 39 assists.

Also as alluded to earlier, Ipswich had an effective serving strategy with a 74-85 effort, featuring around a dozen aces. Abby Grabowska went 19-20 with five aces and Olivier, 14-15,3. Overall Langford was 84-93 at the line, but with a lone ace. That kept the Lady Tigers serve-receive team quite busy, led by Chesney Olivier with 34 digs. Abby Grabowska was next with 23. Ipswich totaled 122 digs; Langford, 57. Paige Mehlberg had an assisted block and a solo block.

Meanwhile five-set matches always produce some impressive statistics and the match hosting Potter County was no exception. The visitors finished 146-170 in hitting with 44 kills, but Ipswich was 173-188 with 58 kills, again paced by Abby Grabowska's 81-86, 29-kill effort. Her sister Lindsey was next at 36-39 with 15 kills. That required a lot of set attempts and the Lady Tigers were 190-194 with 51 assists, led by Heinz, 89-91 with 26 assists and Pitz, 75-75,26.

Ipswich landed 95 serves, but Potter County enjoyed a 10-4 ace lead and also recorded 95 total serves. Ipswich was led by Avery Sylte, 14-16 with a pair of aces, followed by Heinz, who was 10-12,1.

Ipswich came up with 126 digs, paced by Abby Grabowska with 34 and Lindsey Grabowska with 27. The Lady Tigers added six block assists.

The two defeats dropped Ipswich to 9-8 overall and the Lady Tigers are now 1-3 in LRC play. They next travel to Edmunds Central on Thursday, Sept. 27 for a non-league confrontation. Ipswich will then host Eureka/Bowdle on October 1 in league action.