The road to the final four was a bit bumpier than many Blue Springs volleyball fans anticipated, but the Wildcats have reached their final goal.
Following a 26-24, 25-15 victory over Lee’s Summit North in a Class 4 sectional and a harder-than-anticipated 27-25, 25-10 win against upstart Liberty Saturday afternoon in the state quarterfinal at Blue Springs South High School, the Wildcats celebrated a trip to the state championship tournament Friday at Municipal Auditorium in Kansas City.
Liberty slipped past Truman 20-25, 25-18, 25-18 to reach the finals against a determined Wildcat team that upped its record to 32-4 with the two big playoff victories.
“Both of our first games against Lee’s Summit North and Liberty were tough because I think we were kind of nervous,” said senior right side hitter Kirsten Erikson, who had 11 kills in the two matches. “This has been our goal all season and we knew it was going to be tough against North because they beat us in conference (play), and we knew Liberty would be a challenge because they’re much better than their (16-17-1) record would indicate.
“After we won those two first games, we settled down and played really well in the second game.”
The first game against the 31-6-1 Broncos was the classic everyone anticipated as North ran off to an 11-6 lead before the Wildcats fought back and eventually knotted the score at 15-all.
“We knew it was going to be tough, and it was,” said senior middle hitter Lisa Henning, who led the Wildcats with 19 kills. “When it was tied 24-all, we knew we had to get the lead, and we did.”
Henning scored the final three points for Blue Springs with gym-rattling spikes that set up the second-game blowout.
“Once we won the first game,” senior outside hitter Ali Cavanaugh said, “we just knew we were going to win the second one. We felt that way against North and against Liberty. We just had so much confidence.”
The first game against Liberty was a slam-bang affair that was tied three times after the score was knotted at 20-all. The Wildcats finally won on a Kiely Culbertson ace.
“The girls did what they had to do to win tonight,” Blue Springs coach Katie Grusing said. “We’ve talked so many times this season about how the girls are able to maintain their composure, and they did that tonight.
“I think we all expected three close games like the first game of the Lee’s Summit North match and the girls came back strong in that second game.
