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

Area athletes competed at the state cross country meet on Friday and Saturday at Old Settler’s Park in Round Rock.
Six individuals and one team from the area ran against the best in the state to finish out their season on top, but one came back with a medal.
Medals are given to the top 10 individual runners in each classification and the top three teams.
Bellevue freshman Mattie Broussard finished fifth overall with a time of 12:17.
She is the first runner from Bellevue to medal since 2009, but her fifth place is the highest ever for the program, boys or girls.
The next best result was from Bowie senior Isaac Renteria. He finished 25th with a time of 16:46. It was his fourth straight year running at the state meet, but his first time competing in the 3A race.
The previous three years, Renteria ran at Gold-Burg in 1A, where he finished 48th, 41st and then came back with a medal last year in ninth place.
Upping the challenge for himself may not have resulted in a medal this year, but it was his fastest time at the state meet out of all four trips.
Nocona junior Bayler Smith represented her program at state for the third year in a row in the 2A girl’s race, but it was her first time running alone and not with a team. She finished 46th with a time of 13:04.
Prairie Valley had two individual runners competing in the 1A races.
For sophomore Josh Stout, he improved upon his performance as a freshman at state last year, shaving off almost a minute and half as he got 29th with a time of 18:19.
Senior Linzie Priddy ran her final race for the Lady Bulldogs and made her third appearance at the state meet. She got 84th place with a time of 14:07.
Saint Jo had one individual runner and one team compete at the state meet.
Sophomore Savannah Hill ran at state for the first time and finished 55th with a time of 13:48.
The Saint Jo boy’s team finished ninth overall out of 16 teams in the 1A race. Elijah Young was the team’s top runner, getting 45th with a time 18:39.
The Panthers top five runners that scored points also included Barrett Johnson (54th), Jayden Curry (82nd), Julian Luna (91st) and Trent Gaston (117th).

To read the full story and see pictures of all of the runners, pick up a copy of the mid-week edition of the Bowie News.