The Nocona Lady Indians are heading to the regional tournament for the first time in 10 years after beating Lindsay on Tuesday night.
The Lady Indians won 3-1 against the Lady Knights in a rematch from last year’s playoffs.
Nocona was coming off a close five-set win against Como-Pickton from the previous area round match. It was the first close game the Lady Indians had played in nearly month after blowing through their district schedule and bi-district playoff match.
Funny enough, the last close match before district play came against Lindsay, which Nocona won in a five-set thriller on the road.
The Lady Knights had beaten the Lady Indians last year in the playoffs in the same regional quarterfinals round. Lindsay then went on to make it all the way to the state championship match before losing to Windthorst.
The Lady Knights graduated several key players from that team while Nocona returned most of the same faces from last year, but one year older and better.
The Lady Indians were probably slightly favored, but knew from the close win the previous month and a 2-1 loss against Lindsay in a tournament the month before that, the match would be tough.
Nocona came out with so much energy from the team and crowd that it seemed like it was going to set the roof on fire.
That energy lasted for the first 20 points as the Lady Indians jumped out to a 15-5 lead in the first set.
From there the Lady Knights settled down and started to play better and the blistering one-sided pace from Nocona cooled off a little bit.
With a 10-point lead, the Lady Indians were able to play even the rest of the set to win comfortably 25-15, but Lindsay had now woken up.
The Lady Knights went on a 7-3 run early in set two to open up an 8-7 lead into a 15-10. The lead kept growing as Lindsay’s big hitters started hitting their spots. The Lady Knights tied the match up, winning set two 25-17.
The third set was back-and-forth through the first 25 points. Nocona got some advantage, up four points 17-13. From there, the Lady Indians had control and were able to not let Lindsay string enough points in a row to come back.
Nocona won the set 25-20 and looked to close things out in set four, up 2-1.
The Lady Knights were looking to force another five-set match. Neither team could get up by more than two points the entire set.
Lindsay got a 16-14 lead and was able to keep it until the Lady Indians retook the lead 23-22 and looked to close the match.
The Lady Knights came back and had two set points ahead 25-24 and 26-25. Nocona won the next point both time to keep the set alive.
After tying the score at 26-26, the Lady Indians were able to win the next two points, closing out the match on a spike from Meg Meekins. Her teammates piled on her as Nocona won the set 28-26 and the match 3-1.

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