The Bowie Lady Rabbits came into Tuesday night’s home game on a high.
Following a great performance at the Godley tournament that saw the Lady Rabbits beat two state-ranked teams, one twice, saw Bowie rise all the way to number 10 in 3A after not being previously ranked.
Unfortunately, things would eventually come back down to earth for the Lady Rabbits as they lost a frustrating game to Ponder 3-1.
The first set saw Bowie play well throughout. Jumping out to an early 7-3 lead, even when the Lady Lions came back to cut it to 8-7, the Lady Rabbits were playing with the lead for the whole set.
The lead quickly went back up to four 17-13 where Bowie was able to keep them at bay as it won 25-21.
The second set was more of the same. The opening points were back and forth with the Lady Rabbits holding a small 8-7 lead. From there Bowie played its best stretch of the night as it went on a 13-3 run to build a huge 20-10 lead.
It looked like the Lady Rabbits were headed for another set victory that would have put them 2-0, but something happened after a timeout.
Ponder, who had been making a lot of self-inflicted errors, including from the service line, started to tighten things up. Bowie had been solid for the most part in their serve-receive, but things started to snowball on them.
Hitting errors and inconsistent serve-receive passes did not add up to a good thing for a Lady Rabbits’ team that all of sudden had trouble scoring one point.
The Lady Lions came all the way back to tie the set at 23-23. Bowie retook the lead and had match point 24-23, but Ponder scored the next three points to steal the set and tie the match at 1-1.
While the Lady Rabbits hoped to put that set behind them, the match was different afterward. The early third set was close with the score tied 5-5 and then 10-10. Quickly, unlike in sets one or two, the Lady Lions were able to build a big lead going on a 9-1 run to go up 19-11.
Another bad stretch of serve-receive and inefficient offense was the culprit again and Ponder was not bailing Bowie out with service errors.
The Lady Rabbits turned things around to eventually cut the lead to three, but it was too little too late as the Lady Lions won set three 25-21 to take the match lead 2-1.
Bowie needed to win set four if it wanted to force a fifth set for a chance to win. Hoping some of the momentum from the end of set three, that saw the Lady Rabbits go on a 10-6 run, would be able to shake off the last two sets.
The early points had some of the same feeling to it. Ponder was able to get an early 12-8 lead. Bowie was able to make it up with solid play and great blocking as the score was tied at 18-18.
From this point, neither team was able to get much of an advantage.
The teams exchanged points all the way up to being tied 22-22. From there, the Lady Lions were able to convert the final three points to win the set 25-22 and the match 3-1.

To read the full story, pick up a copy of the weekend edition of the Bowie News.