Carey volleyball overcame a five-set test from Dietrich Tuesday night to improve to 10-1 in the Northside Conference with the district tournament looming Monday.
The Panthers won the first two games 25-23 and 25-9 before losing the next two 22-25 and 13-25.
"The first two games were, I don't want to say easy, but we were playing really well together," Carey head coach Kathy Whitworth said, adding that a few tough calls in the third game knocked her team off track. "After that, the girls lost everything."
Locked at two games apiece, Carey took the fifth and deciding game 15-11 for the win.
"Once they got the momentum back, they came along and finally finished it strong," Whitworth said about her girls, adding that senior RayAnne Hennefer served six straight points in the fifth game to lead the Panthers to victory.
Carey boasts a 17-3 overall record and finished off the regular season Thursday night with a tri-match at defending league and class 1A state champion Shoshone, which is undefeated (11-0) in the conference and coming off a 3-0 sweep of the Community School Tuesday night. Glenns Ferry was the third team.
Shoshone blanked Carey 3-0 September 20—the teams' only other meeting this season. If nothing else, Thursday night's match served as a primer for the district tournament, which begins Monday, Oct. 17.
Whitworth said her biggest challenge at this point of the season is keeping her team focused.
"I need to keep the girls together as a team right now," Whitworth said. "Stuff falls apart every year at tournament time. There's a little bit of tiredness—we play a lot of games in a short amount of time—and some girls are looking forward to basketball season."
But Shoshone may present an even greater psychological challenge.
"The girls here think Shoshone and they're like, 'Eeeeek,'" Whitworth said. "Physically I think we can beat them, we're an evenly matched team. But mentally they're a bit ahead of us."
