Campbell County and Scott will meet for the ninth time in the 37th District championship since the district was aligned this way in 2012 on Thursday night.
The Camels topped Calvary Christian in the first matchup of the semifinals at Bishop Brossart on Tuesday night, Scott taking down the host in the second matchup of the evening.
Here’s how it went down:
Scott 3, Bishop Brossart 1 (25-27, 25-11, 25-17, 25-16)
The Eagles overcame some first set adversity to light a fire under them and defeat the host Mustangs in four sets.
With a few calls that didn’t go Scott’s way, Brossart shot out to a 17-11 lead after a Kate Neltner ace. Scott rallied to take a 21-20 behind a Payton Grigsby kill, but it was short-lived as Brossart rattled off four of the next six points for a 24-23 lead on another Neltner kill.
A Morgan Justice kill for the Eagles was followed by a Mustangs kill for yet another set point. Milyn Minor fought off the set point with a kill, but a service error followed by a violation that the Eagles were furious about ended the set with a Brossart 27-25 advantage.
Trailing 4-3 in the second set, Scott went on a 8-0 run behind four Minor kills to make it 11-4. Brossart was unable to recover from there, Scott’s relentless attack yielding 16 kills in the set to take it 25-11.
“We just kind of cleaned stuff up a little bit. Stuck to our scouting report, what we’ve been practicing, what we talked about and we tried to speed up our offense which I think kind of threw them off the the next couple of sets,” Eagles coach Andrea Sullivan said. “That was the key to the game was running a quicker offense.”
The Mustangs regrouped to take a 11-7 lead in the third set, but another Scott run gave them a 2-1 set advantage in the match, ending the third set on a 18-6 run.
“Really tried to get them out of system and used some double blocks against their hitters to make them think about it and hit around it,” Sullivan said.
The Eagles left no doubt in the fourth set, jumping out to a 11-2 lead after a Payton Grigsby kill. Trailing 20-8, Brossart didn’t go down without a fight as they took eight of the next 12 points, but the rally came too little, too late, Minor finishing the game with her 25th kill of the night.
“We just needed to fix our errors. We knew what we did wrong in the first set and came out in the second set knowing what we had to do to be able make the change and come together,” Minor said. “We cleaned up our defense and made things faster for our offense and I think that helped.”
Scott’s attacking game resulted in 52 kills for the contest. They had 51 assists, 80 digs and nine aces. After Minor’s 25 kills, Morgan Justice had 10, Brooklyn Helm with seven. Elise Manhardt had 19 digs, Minor with 18. Ryann Grigsby had 48 assists. Helm and Minor had three aces, Justice with two.
They move on to Thursday’s final to face Campbell County at 6 p.m. The two have met twice this season, the Camels taking both matches, 2-1 (23-25, 25-20, 25-11) on Sept. 15 at the Cake Classic at Highlands and then again on Sept. 27 in the district seed match, 3-2 (9-25, 25-20, 25-23, 20-25, 15-12).
Brossart finished with 29 kills, 27 assists and 78 digs to go with four aces. Payton Parker had nine kills, Neltner with eight. Maddie Kremer and Neltner had 17 digs apiece, Cecilia Phirman with 10. Aubrey Rebholz led the way in the assist department with 17.
“We lost control in that second set and never really gained control back,” Mustangs coach Danielle French said. “We had a lot of attacking errors, some setting errors, some passing errors and all that combined hurt us.”
Their season closes out at 21-13 and will miss out on the region tournament a year after winning the region.
“Very talented group. Super excited with the group that we have. It’s going to be tough losing our five seniors, they were all key components and leaders, but we have a very talented freshman class and a very talented group of middle schoolers,” French said. “We have a very promising team for years to come.”
Campbell County 3, Calvary Christian 0 (28-26, 25-11, 25-13)
The Camels fought off six set points in the first set to rally and eventually wear down the Cougars with the strong front line play of Emma Manser and Lexi Scharold.
Trailing 24-19, Campbell County (16-12) rallied for five straight points to get things to 24-24. They faced another set point at 25-24 after an error, but scored two straight before eventually taking the set, 28-26.
Manser tallied three kills for the Camels final three points in the set, finishing with 22 kills on the night.
“We just needed to come together as a team. We were playing a little too much individually and once we called that last timeout in the first set we talked about how this is a team sport and we need to play for each other lit a fire under us,” Manser said.
The momentum completely stayed on the Camels side from there. They opened the second set with a 7-0 advantage behind the strong service game of A lon McIntyre with a couple of aces, Manser racking up four kills during the spurt. It helped them race out to a 13-2 lead before taking the set, 25-11.
The No. 1 seeded Camels, who missed the region tournament a season ago for the first time since 2015, used that as a motivating factor to eventually close out the final set, 25-13.
“Last year was a whole hot mess, but this year I feel like we definitely have it,” Scharold said. “We’ve been working our butt off all season. We know we can make it to state and we will make it to state this year.”
On top of Manser’s 22 kills, Scharold had 10 as the two combined for 32 of their 39 kills on the evening. Hope Hamilton had 31 assists to clear the 500 mark for her career, Ava Crowl and Ella Thorwarth had three aces apiece, Thorwarth with 17 digs to get her to the 1,000 dig milestone as they tallied 52 digs for the match, Crowl reaching her 500th career dig during the match.
“Emma was very on today. She was demanding the ball and the dishing out to her was amazing,” Camels coach Mikah Freppon said. “We know we have a big target on our back being the No. 1 seed in the district and ranked at the top of the region, so the girls put that aside and enter every game with an underdog mentality that we’re going to win every game.”
Campbell County moves on to Thursday’s championship against Scott back at Bishop Brossart. The match begins at 6 p.m.
Calvary Christian closes out their season at 16-11, graduating four seniors. Isabella Mulling was the All-Tournament team representative for the Cougars.
“The girls came out and remembered their goals and were moving, talked and played smart ball. We lack height and experience to a certain extent so they had to come out and be different and they did,” Cougars coach Becky Stelzer said.
Calvary finished with 19 kills in the match. They were unable to overcome 21 errors. They’ll graduate four seniors.
“We had a winning season. We were over .500 and did really well with what we had,” Stelzer said. “Super proud of what they did and the impact the seniors had on this team. They’re going to use the lessons from volleyball and this sport that we get to play and continue to develop as young ladies off the court in whatever area they go into.”
