Lady Cats preparing for sub-state match with Miege

Sophomore setter Rinny McMullen sets up a teammate during a match earlier this season. Louisburg will face Bishop Miege on Saturday in the first round of sub-state in Atchison.

The last time Louisburg and Bishop
Miege met on the volleyball court in the postseason was last year’s state
championship match.

This time around, the same two
teams will be meeting again, but this time in the first round of the sub-state
tournament.

Louisburg (19-15), which is the
No. 7 seed, will travel to Atchison to face No. 10 Bishop Miege (15-22) at 3
p.m. on Saturday in a rematch of the Class 4A state title match.

Records and seeds don’t mean much
when it comes to postseason play as Miege is currently the No. 3-ranked team in
Class 4A and the Lady Cats are No. 5. Two of the top teams in the state will
square off in hopes of making it to Salina for the state tournament.

“The team that shows up is the team that
comes away with the win,” Louisburg coach Jessica Compliment said. “Seven of our
10 players have the experience of playing at state, and I think this match will
have that feel to it. It is a rematch of the state championship so it should be
a good match.”

The Lady Cats do have a little momentum
going into the match as they defeated Piper on the road Tuesday in their
regular season finale, 25-11, 25-9 and 25-19. The victory snapped what was a
five-match losing streak that happened the week before.

“It
was good to end the regular season on a win against Piper,” Compliment said. “We
didn’t win the league title this year, but it was still important to finish
strong in the league. It wasn’t our cleanest match, but the team was able to
loosen up and have fun for their last regular season match.”

Junior Carleigh Pritchard led the charge
offensively against Piper as she finished with a team-high eight kills and
senior Haley Cain was right behind her with six. Senior Erin Lemke added five
in the win.

The Lady Cats did a lot of damage from
behind the service line as they recorded 15 aces in the three sets. Cain had a
big night with five aces and served a team-high 12 points, while libero Reilly
Ratliff-Becher and sophomore Chase Kallevig each had three.

Sophomore Rinny McMullen recorded a
team-best 12 assists and fellow sophomore Davis Guetterman finished with nine.
McMullen also had team-high six digs and Cain was second with four.

With the regular season behind them, the
Lady Cats are putting their focus on the postseason – namely Bishop Miege. The
two teams met earlier this season and the Stags took Louisburg down in two
sets, 25-19 and 25-15.

Compliment and the Lady Cats believes
Miege will see a different team than the one they saw at the Ottawa
Invitational earlier this month.

“The team is excited to see Miege on
Saturday,” Compliment said. “We didn’t play our best when we saw them earlier
in the season, but I think we’ve gotten stronger since then. Miege always plays
tough in the postseason, but we also seem to step up when it comes to postseason
play. We have a lot of players who have been in many high stakes matches, and
any postseason match is high stakes match.”

The two teams will square off at 3 p.m.,
at Atchison High School. The winner of that match will play the winner between
No. 2 seed Atchison and the winner of the play-in game between Field Kindley
and Parsons for the sub-state championship.