Lady Cats preparing for sub-state match with Miege

By Andy Brown
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Updated: October 25, 2019

Andy Brown / Louisburg Sports Zone

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.