Notre Dame’s volleyball team had a stressful start Monday.
The Pandas finished just fine – a 3-0 (25-23, 25-18, 25-18) home win over Lexington Catholic in the first round of the KHSAA girls volleyball tournament.
The reward: 14th Region champion Knott County Central, a 3-1 winner over Ashland, in the quarterfinals at 7:30 p.m. Friday at George Rogers Clark High School in Winchester.
Notre Dame has won 10 state titles, including trophies in 2020 and 2022, but a memory as painful as a swing to the nose drives the Pandas – last year’s 3-1 loss to 23-time champion Louisville Assumption. Senior Ava Tilden thinks about it most every day.
“We do know that we have high expectations, and we like it,” Tilden said. “But sometimes it does mess with us a little bit. It’s like we expect perfection out of ourselves; we just know we need to cut ourselves some slack sometimes.”
Tilden and Julia Grace each had 14 service attacks, and Grace added 18 digs. Lizzy Larkins served 41 assists.
“Ava Tilden is someone we rely on very heavily across the board,” Pandas co-coach Leslie Litmer said. “She plays six rotations, so she touches the ball a whole lot, and I think she’s done a really nice job of handling that role.”
Monday was Notre Dame’s first-ever meeting against Catholic (26-7), who advanced to state for the first time. The Knights – specifically senior outside hitter Addie Lowe – had the Pandas reeling; her tip over Notre Dame’s front line, a kill and a block of Audrey Dyas’ swing gave her team a 3-0 lead.
Catholic’s lead went to 6-1 in part because Charlotte Hall blocked Tilden at the net and Miller Duncan served an ace. Litmer said it was okay for her team to struggle early on.
“And I was proud to see them kind of overcome that ‘cause that’s part of the sport,” Litmer said. “It wasn’t a particularly strong serving performance throughout the match.”
Other things Litmer liked: serve receiving and first contact in passing.
“It allowed us to move around the ball a lot to a lot of different hitters, which is again critical to our team being successful,” Litmer said. “If we have only one hitter that’s doing well, it’s easy to defend them.”
Catholic moved ahead for much of the set when Notre Dame got close. When the Pandas tied at 14-all on a Lizzy Larkins ace, the Knights’ Shay Pope’s kill and a block made it 16-14.
After Notre Dame’s Teagan Kondik’s kill tied the match at 16-all, neither team led by more than the winning margin. Grace Portwood’s tip over Catholic’s block secured the win.
“Kudos to Lexington Catholic for coming in here with the energy that they did because I feel like they really took in the atmosphere in the moment that they had in their hands,” Litmer said. “ … You would never have guessed that that was a team that had never been there before.”
Notre Dame (32-3) finished the second set with a 6-3 run. Four points stood out: Tilden’s hitting through a two-player Catholic block, Ella Goetz’s tip and kills by Lacey Hostetler and Portwood.
Goetz’s tip put Notre Dame ahead, 6-3, in the third set – which didn’t last long because Duncan’s block capped a 4-1 run.
Notre Dame finished on a 13-8 run, with Tilden’s kill being the final point.
Before every practice, the Pandas list “sweets and sours” – two good things and one bad thing about each day. Tilden’s sweets: her dad fixed breakfast (a blueberry bagel with cream cheese, a smoothie and two eggs) and Monday’s win.
And the sour?
“I was almost late for school,” she said.