Battling the Lady Buffaloes

Coming out of their pre-season invite, the Saratoga Lady Panthers hit the road and were hosted by the 3A Mountain View Lady Buffaloes. Despite not being able to take a set from Mountain View, the Lady Panthers fought hard to keep the scores as close as possible.

“Our girls competed the whole match,” said Shayley Love, head coach for the Lady Panthers. “They never gave up and this match really helped us to see what needs adjusted defensively. I was really proud of many things these girls did, most importantly never giving up.”

Each set the Saratoga girls played saw them increase their scoring against the higher conference Lady Buffaloes, beginning with a score of 14-25 in the first set. In the second set, the Lady Panthers ended up with a score of 15-25. For the final set, Saratoga fell 19-25 to the Lady Buffaloes.

“A bigger school is going to throw a different style of volleyball at us and I really wish we had another chance at them later in the season because I feel it would be a different match,” Love said.

Senior Aubrey Berger led the Lady Panthers with 7 kills against Mountain West and was followed by fellow senior Jenna Dew with 3 kills. Whitney Bennett, Savannah Wells and Taylor Bennett each had 2 kills against the Lady Buffaloes. Berger also attacked the net 40 times with W. Bennett attacking 26 times.

In serving, T. Bennett served 2 aces with 100 percent success rate out of seven serves. W. Bennett also served seven times and held a 100 percent success rate. Dew served 1 ace and, out of 12 serves, had a 91.7 success rate.

T. Bennett was also the lead blocker, with five solo blocks. Dew also had a solo block while Berger and Duke each had one assisted block.

Libero Tasia Daley dug the ball out of the Lady Panther’s court a total of 17 times and was followed by W. Bennett with 16 digs and Berger with 15 digs.

The Lady Panthers will have hosted the North Park Lady Wildcats on Sept. 10 as part of their homecoming and will host the Rock River Lady Longhorns at 6 p.m. on Sept. 12 before traveling to Encampment to take on the Lady Tigers at noon on Sept. 14.