CONWAY — Things didn’t go quite as the Bryant Lady Hornets hoped in their showdown with the rival Conway Lady Wampus Cats at Buzz Bolding Arena Thursday night.
With thoughts of earning their first win over Conway in Coach Beth Solomon’s 11-year tenure at Bryant, the Lady Hornets wound up absorbing a 20-25, 19-25, 25-23, 19-25 setback.
They’re now 15-4 overall, 5-2 in the 7A/6A-Central Conference and 2-1 against 7A teams in the league. They’ll take a break from conference play on Monday, Sept. 28, when they visit Benton. They’ll return to league play at Alma on Tuesday, Sept. 29.
“We played a really hard-fought game tonight,” Solomon said. “We really wish the outcome would’ve been different. We had several calls that didn’t go in our favor but we can’t let that get to us in a game.
“Several of our players were just off tonight so we’re going to try to get regrouped,” she added. “I’m proud of the way we worked tonight. We played hard. Obviously, we’re not happy with the loss but we’ll get them next time. When they come to our place, things will be different.
“I don’t want to take away from the fact that, in game three there, we were down 20-11 and came back,” the coach mentioned. “We really got a pretty good run going and I really thought for a minute we were going to pull that off.”
Allie Anderson finished with 19 kills and five solo blocks. Raven Loveless had 13 kills and a pair of solo blocks. Brittney Warner added five kills, Britney Sahlmann three, Kendall Selig two and Alex Dillard one.
Dillard contributed two solo blocks as well with Warner, Selig and Sahlmann each getting one.
Sahlmann contributed 33 assists, 16 digs and was good on all 18 of her serves with three aces. Kaci Squires got in all 13 of her serves with two aces and Anderson had two aces as well. Selig got in all 10 of her serves while Whitney Brown and Savannah Shelton were each 10 of 11.
Brown finished with 20 digs. Shelton had 11.
In a JV match, Conway prevailed 25-18, 25-8. The Lady Hornets had just eight kills as a team. Sarah Kennedy had three of those. Reagan Blend and Shaelyn Smith had two each, Tori Allen one.
Kennedy, Blend and Ashlyn Lee had the only aces as the Lady Hornets finished with 27 serves, getting in 25.
Lee led with eight assists and six digs. Kyla Baker came up with four digs and Kennedy three.
