Class A No. 1 Papillion-La Vista South volleyball has only lost two matches this season on Nebraska soil — both to the Elkhorn North Wolves, during the season-opening Bellevue West Invitational.
On Thursday, the Titans avenged those losses in Class B No. 3 Elkhorn North’s gym with a 23-25, 26-24, 25-21, 25-23 victory to improve to 21-5 on the season.
“It feels good,” Coach Katie Tarman told NebPreps. “It feels like we’re making progress, and it feels like the girls are growing as people and growing as athletes and just getting stronger and tougher.”
Tarman said the difference between the previous losses and Thursday’s win lies in the details.
“There are some things we’ve been working on, they executed those things, so it just reiterates what we’ve been working on with them, and them just being able to get over the mental hump of knowing that they could do it,” Tarman said.
The Titans feature a balanced offense with four players averaging between 2.0 and 3.0 kills per set, but junior Makenna Sanders stepped up in a big way with one of the best performances of her season, unofficially finishing with 18 kills on .300 hitting. She dominated the third set, with half her kills coming in the frame.
“It was really clean,” Tarman said of Sanders. “She’s just growing as a player too. She’s very dependable, she has a smile on her face most of the time — which is just nice to have — and she’s a competitor.”
Junior middle blocker Lyric Judson added 11 kills and four aces while fellow junior Finley Moore finished with 13 kills.
Creighton commit Reagan Wallraff put up 27 kills for the Wolves, but the Titans forced her to take 82 swings to get there and held her to .183 hitting, the second-lowest percentage of her season. As a team, Elkhorn North (19-5) only hit .143.
“Reagan is an amazing player, and she was going to get her kills, but we adjusted, and we made some small changes, and we were able to dig her and outlast her a little bit,” Tarman said.
The first set was close throughout, but Wallraff and Payton Palmer took over down the stretch to key a 7-1 finish to the set for the Wolves to earn the deuce game win. Wallraff and Palmer, a sophomore, combined for 11 kills in the set, with Palmer added three aces and a block late.
The second set was tight late as well, with ties at 20, 22, 23 and 24. However, Judson stepped up late with a kill and an ace to close out the set and even the match.
The third set was tied at 19-all as well before the Titans put together a strong finish, winning six of the last eight rallies including a block on set point to seal it. Papio South took it despite 10 kills from Wallraff, with Sanders nearly matching her with nine.
The Titans won six of the first eight rallies in set four, but Elkhorn North ripped off a 4-0 run to pull even. Eight more ties and a handful of lead changes followed before the Wolves raced ahead, building a 19-15 lead.
The Titans earned a side out, then sophomore Tess Solomon went back to the line and turned up the pressure, serving six more points including an ace to put the Titans back in front, 22-19.
“That’s just kids being gutsy and putting their all behind the ball,” Tarman said. “That was good stuff.”
The Wolves didn’t quit, rallying to tie it again at 23-all, but Papio South earned the sideout to set up match point and Rutgers commit Kami Dyrstad delivered a bullet for the team’s 10th ace of the night.
“We’ve been working on serving, because we’ve been struggling,” Tarman said. “Again, it’s just nice to reiterate that you’ve been working on this, and that details matter.”
Since the Bellevue West Invitational, the Titans have only lost three matches, all coming at the Durango Classic, a two-day tournament in Las Vegas Sept. 19-20. Papio South went 3-3 with 2-0 wins against Las Vegas Palo Verde (Nev.), Torrance South (Calif.) and Louisville Mercy (Ky.) and 2-0 losses to Honolulu ‘Iolani (Hawai’i), Queen Creek Casteel (Ariz.) and Harvard-Westlake (Calif.). Tarman said her team benefitted from both the wins and the losses in Vegas.
“It helps so much because they just learn that they are able to compete at that level, but also that they’re not that good,” Tarman said. “So to stay humble and work on the details and work on the things that we talk about, and they’ll actually get a lot better. Sometimes that takes losses to some good teams to learn that.”
The Titans have put the lessons from the Durango Classic to use as Thursday was the team’s eighth straight win overall and 13th straight against other Nebraska teams. Papillion-La Vista South is unbeaten in Class A as it seeks its second straight state championship.
“This team has taken some time to get to this point, but I have seen a shift in their mentality from a coach-led team to a player-led team,” Tarman said. “That’s what we’re always striving for every year, and in the last two weeks, I’ve seen it happen, and so now we’ve just got to stay with that.”
The Titans have one more tournament this weekend before closing out the regular season at Elkhorn South. Papio South will compete in the Skutt Catholic Invitational on Saturday, with matches against the Class B No. 2 SkyHawks plus two teams from the Kansas City metro area.
“It’s just exciting to play good teams,” Tarman said. “We love to surround ourselves with good teams, so it will set us up for yet another, hopefully, little boost to the end.”
