By Andy Morphew | The Duncan Banner
After facing an unknown team for the first time in a big setting of the Class 5A Volleyball State Tournament, the Duncan Lady Demons ended their season against No. 1 Mount St. Mary who won 3-0.Mount St. Mary started the first set by wining 25-13 despite the first set seeing a battle as the teams traded scores for the first seven points of the match.The Lady Rockets went on their first run of the match and took a five-point lead before Duncan stopped the rally and scored back-to-back points to cut the lead to 8-5.
Duncan got it to four points after Mount St. Mary took the eight-point lead, however the Lady Rockets went on a final run that put it out of the reach. This put the Lady Demons down 1-0.In the second set, the Lady Demons again had a few rally points in the game, however Mount St. Mary won with the same score as the first set — 25-13.
Down 2-0, the Lady Demons showed their “never quit” style of volleyball by scoring the first point of the third set, keeping in the game several times throughout the third set of the game.Mount St. Mary went on a run that put Duncan out of reach of a win despite a comeback from the Lady Demons.
The opponents won the third set 25-16.Casey Phillips and Sheridan White started the third set for Duncan with a 3-2 lead before Mount St. Mary took the lead at 10-4 in the third set.Kaylee Foster, one of the seniors for the Lady Demons, got a much needed kill with Alexis Giles bringing in the next kill to take it within four points.Foster got the final point to make it an 11-7 lead for Mount St. Mary.
However, the Lady Rockets went on a 7-0 run to lead 18-7 before Duncan went on a final run to cut the lead.Kaylee Harrison and Phillips led the charge while another senior in Klarissa Testa helped bring Duncan back into the action in an effort to avoid the sweep.Phillips and Meg Walker kept Duncan up with the final two points of the set for the Lady Demons before Mount St. Mary got the final offense to take the sweep and head to the semi-finals.
Lady Demons’ head coach Amanda Lard said despite the result, the support the community showed made this trip worth every minute of the experience.“First of all the support behind us … I can’t even describe it, we had so many people with parents of players in the past and former players, teachers and Duncan citizens and residents with an outpouring of support — was amazing,” Lard said. “I felt like the girls were like on cloud nine and felt so important, but they also earned it and they deserved it and they fought their way into the State Tournament. We earned it and we deserved to be here.”Duncan’s coach was also very proud of how the girls kept in the fight and realized that is a big part of the reason for the success this season — using the “never quit” manner.“
That senior class, they are rockstars and they don’t quit and they fight so hard. Even though we were down … they don’t quit and they don’t just roll over and die,” Lard said. “We knew that we had it in us and we showed that third set that we could do something and in the end, they just overpowered us too much and they had a few more weapons than we did and that is the way the game goes sometimes.”
With this as the final game for the Duncan Lady Demons’ volleyball season, the athletes had a big group of seniors and Lard knows it will be tough to replace this group.“Well I know growing up I was just telling them that I loved basketball and I wore No. 33 because my favorite player on the high school team that wore No. 33,” Lard said. “There will be girls out there watching that are in the middle school who will want to wear those numbers because these girls wore those numbers and they want to be involved and they want to play hard because that is how those girls played.
The example they set and the foundation they laid for our team and program in the future of it is unmatched of any year I have ever coached. They are a special group and they are hard to describe — anything that you can say about them doesn’t feel good enough. They will be missed and I appreciate them day in and day out. It will be hard to say goodbye to them.”Finishing the season with a record of 25-10, Lard believes the pieces are there for a return next season and hopes to appear at the State Tournament for a long time.“In the end game, we hope that we are bigger, faster and stronger. We’ve got a freshman crew that got a lot of experience and we have a freshman crew coming in next year that will be hungry,” Lard said. “We have a lot of involvement with the Attack Program that has been based out of Duncan and the buzz of Duncan volleyball is there and it is expanding. Hopefully all of those players coming back will feed off this year and let that motivate them.”
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