The Saint Jo Lady Panthers are on to the regional tournament for the second straight season after beating Dodd City on Tuesday night.
The Lady Panthers won in four sets against the Lady Hornets in a repeat of last year’s playoff road.
Saint Jo was coming into the match following a close five-set win against Sulphur Bluff that went down to the wire in the area round.
It was the second time the teams would play this season. The two played in the championship game of the Lady Panthers hosted tournament in mid-September. Saint Jo won that match which was only a best of three instead of best of five sets 2-0, with only the first set being close.
Dodd City had only lost three matches since that time as the Lady Hornets were ranked among the top 15-20 in the state in 1A.
Like every year in almost every sport, at some point a county 1A team will have to go through Dodd City in the playoffs if they want to break through and go farther than a week in the playoffs.
Forestburg found that out in the previous area round match, losing in straight sets though competing well in defeat.
Saint Jo won the first set 25-19. The Lady Hornets fired back with an equally competitive set two win 25-21 to tie the score at 1-1.
The third set proved to be the closest and most important. It went back and forth as neither team was ahead by more than a point or two at any time.
Coming down to the final stretch, neither team was ahead by the two-point margin it needed to win at 25 points. The Lady Panthers were then able to close out the set by winning the next two points, making the set three score 27-25 and giving Saint Jo a 2-1 lead.
The edge-on-your seat win for the Lady Panthers seemed to broken Dodd City heading into the fourth set. Saint Jo came out on fire and the Lady Hornets could not answer back.
After the close win in set three, the match came to an end with little drama in the most one-sided set of the match with the Lady Panthers winning 25-14 to close out the match 3-1.

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