At the most crucial point of Thursday night’s District 5-A volleyball championship match, Boyd-Buchanan couldn’t have asked for a better player to send to the line against Grace Academy.
With the second set tied at 24, the Lady Bucs’ Asia Kirkman served up back-to-back aces, delivering a 26-24 win and sending Boyd-Buchanan into the decisive third game with momentum on its side.
Her team then closed out a hard-fought 3-0 victory that defends the Lady Bucs’ district title and sends them into next week’s region tournament as a No.
1 seed.
“Asia is our go-to player,” Boyd-Buchanan coach Alfie Dodd said. “She started off a little slow tonight, but she picked it up when it counted the most, especially with those aces at the end of the game.”
The top-seeded Lady Bucs battled Grace Academy throughout each set of the championship match. In the first, neither team led by more than three points until Sarah Emrey’s two aces served Boyd-Buchanan to a 20-14 advantage. The Lady Golden Eagles fought back to within 20-18 on a kill from hard-hitting sophomore Alex Smith, but a kill from Kirkman and a side out finished Boyd-Buchanan’s 25-18 win.
The margin was even closer in the second set, in which the teams traded points and leads from start to finish. Neither could manage to pull away, not even when Grace held set point at 24-22. Two kills tied it for Boyd-Buchanan before Kirkman’s two aces gave her team the 2-0 match advantage.
It also gave the Lady Bucs the momentum heading into the third set, but Dodd said his team had to spend much of the match working to overcome its own mistakes.
“It took some steam out of them,” he said of the second-set rally, “but we still played very badly compared to how we played last night. Grace is a talented team, but we had 18 hitting errors and 11 serving errors. For us to still win speaks volumes for my team.
“Sometimes when you play like that, you get down and it’s hard to get back up. But we played with a lot of heart. They didn’t let the mistakes get to them. Usually when we get down like that, it’s hard for us to come back, but they stayed confident and motivated. I think they knew that they were making mistakes, but they just kept trying harder and harder.”
After building an 8-3 lead early in the third set, several of those Lady Bucs errors helped Grace work its way back to tie the score at 12 on a kill from Claire McMasters. The score was tied again at 13, 15 and 17 until Boyd-Buchanan scored four straight, then claimed match point at 24-18.
The Lady Golden Eagles fought it off three times, each one on a kill from Smith, but a service error ultimately handed Boyd-Buchanan the 25-21 victory.
“I felt like we came out ready, but we’re a very young team,” Grace coach Hillary Waters said. “We only have one senior, and for many of these girls, this is the first time they’ve played in a championship game in anything. We felt a lot of pressure and anxiety about just being here. But I’m very proud of our girls. They played hard, and we will take home this runner-up trophy with pride and excitement.”
Boyd-Buchanan’s Katie DeLay was named the tournament MVP after recording 19 digs, four assists and three aces against Grace. Joining her on the all-tournament team were Kirkman, who finished with 10 kills and three aces, Halie Williamson, who totaled eight assists, and Kristen Reynolds, who finished with eight kills, 13 assists, and five aces.
For Grace, regular-season district MVP Smith was also named to the all-tournament team with 13 kills and 23 digs against Boyd-Buchanan. She was joined by McMasters with five kills, three digs and a block, and senior Krissy Aruca with nine digs. Other all-tournament selections were Silverdale Baptist’s Caroline Couch and Molly Rumfelt, Arts & Sciences’ Arica Montgomery and Alex Hollis, and Jessica Allen from Copper Basin.
Serena Turner finished the night with seven kills and eight digs for Grace, while Lexi Horne made 27 assists and Miriam Horne totaled 20 digs. The Lady Golden Eagles, now 17-14, will play in the Region 3-A tournament against District 6 champion Sale Creek on Monday.
Waters said her team lost a tough match to the Lady Panthers earlier in the season, but since then she has watched the Lady Golden Eagles not only improve in skill, but also begin to play with more confidence.
“We have great leaders who get the girls motivated and excited,” she said. “Tonight, they could see the opportunities that were there for us to take. That’s going to be good for us as we move forward into the region tournament, to see opportunities that we can and should take advantage of.”
Boyd-Buchanan (29-14) will host the region tournament Monday, when the Lady Bucs open play against 6-A runner-up Lookout Valley at 6 p.m. with the Grace-Sale Creek semifinal match to follow.
“They’re very talented, athletic and aggressive,” Dodd said of Lookout Valley. “It’s going to be a good matchup, but I feel like when we play our best, we can play with anybody.”
Monday’s winners will face off in the region championship match Tuesday at 6 p.m., with both advancing to the Class A state sectional round on Thursday.
(E-mail Jaime Barrett at jaimenbarrett@gmail.com)