In the fourth straight year Prairie Valley and Saint Jo met in the playoffs, it was the Lady Bulldogs who came out on top on Tuesday night.
The older and more experienced Prairie Valley team won in straight sets against the young and spunky Lady Panthers.
These programs are used to seeing each other in a win or go home scenario this time of year.
Until this season, the teams met three straight times in the regional quarterfinal round, with the winner earning a trip to the regional tournament.
Saint Jo won in 2018 and 2020 while Prairie Valley won in 2019. The pattern kept true for the Lady Bulldogs.
Prairie Valley actually entered the game as the lower seed, finishing in third place in its district behind Electra and Bryson. Saint Jo lost its play-in game against Graford for the first seed after splitting the district title with the Lady Rabbits.
The two teams had played back in August at Saint Jo where the Lady Bulldogs won that game.
Both of these teams have been through a lot since then.
The Lady Panthers have been dealing with the majority of their team being freshman and getting up to speed playing high school volleyball.
Prairie Valley had to deal with injuries to key players heading into and during most of the first round of district play.
The first set saw the Lady Bulldogs race out into a lead up 9-3. The lead grew to almost double-digits at one point, but Saint Jo came back to cut it to 17-12.
From there though Prairie Valley closed out the set strong, going on an 8-3 run to win 25-15 and take a 1-0 lead.
The second set started okay, but once the Lady Bulldogs got the lead it just started to snowball for the Lady Panthers.
Up 6-4, Prairie Valley won 10 of the next 12 points thanks to a flurry of serves Saint Jo had trouble returning.
The Lady Bulldogs never let the Lady Panthers get any sort of momentum as they won the set 25-8 to go up 2-0.
Saint Jo came out in the third set with nothing to lose as its season was on the line.
The Lady Panthers took an early 4-0 lead and kept it for most of the early set. Prairie Valley hung around, but was still trailing at 10-5, 14-10 and 19-15.
The Lady Bulldogs came on late and tied the match at 21-21. Saint Jo took the lead back 23-21 and looked like it might hang on to win the set it had controlled.
Prairie Valley won the next two points to tie the match back up at 23-23. A hitting error from the Lady Panthers on the next point gave the Lady Bulldogs match point.
A tipped ball over from Karagan Ritchie bounced sideways off a Saint Jo player who tried to save it. Prairie Valley won the set 25-23 and the match 3-0.

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