The Forestburg Lady Horns season came to an end on Monday night in their bi-district match against Crowell.
The Lady Cats won 3-1 against the Lady Horns to end their season.
Forestburg came into the match as the lower seed and likely underdog. It did not stop the Lady Horns from winning their playoff match last year, but Crowell was a 26 win team that just so happened to have the misfortune of being in a district with top-ranked team Harrold.
Thankfully for Forestburg, one of the Lady Cats top hitters was out with an injury. While Crowell had a bit more size all over the court and brought the much bigger crowd, there was still a chance for the Lady Horns.
The match started and set one saw Forestburg slowly whittle away the Lady Cats hitting confidence. The Lady Horns only have a few players that can hit the ball at the net and Crowell had some tough blockers to deter them. So Forestburg was content to play conservative and tip the ball over for most of the night.
In the first set it worked. The Lady Cats would made a ball control error or eventually make a hitting error out of bounds or into the net while the Lady Horns tried to play clean and scrappy.
Also, Forestburg got a big boost from middle blocker Taylor Griggs who got her hands on several balls which exasperated Crowell’s hitting woes.
The Lady Horns won set one commandingly 25-18 to give them some confidence heading forward. Unfortunately, the conservative style of play came back to bite them.
Set two saw the Lady Cats finally put things together stopped making so many hitting errors.
Outside of Griggs, Forestburg did not offer a lot of resistance at the net during some rotations which meant its back row had to sometimes suffer full force hits which was hard to deal with.
Also, the Lady Horns back row was playing up to take away any tipping Crowell might pull, so the Lady Cats started aiming for the deep back row where no one was. It was a high risk shot since it was so close to going out, but as the match wore on more of them started to go in much to Forestburg’s dismay.
While the Lady Horns were content to play scrappy and tip the ball over until Crowell made a mistake, the Lady Cats were cleaning up the errors and making Forestburg pay for not being aggressive.
The next two sets saw Crowell win easily 25-11 and 25-14 as Forestburg could not find an answer. Even as the Lady Horns tried to mix in more aggressive hits at the net, the results were up and down and frustrated their players.
The fourth set looked like it was heading the same way as the Lady Cats were up 17-8.
Forestburg made one last mighty push, going on an 8-2 run to cut the lead to three points 19-16. Unfortunately, that would be as close as the Lady Horns would get.
Crowell closed the match on 6-3 run to win 25-19 and 3-1 overall.

To read the full story, pick up a copy of the mid-week edition of the Bowie News. For more pictures from the game, click here https://www.dotphoto.com/go.asp?l=bnews1&AID=6870328&T=1