Lady Titans Statebound

The Thayer Central volleyball team added a C2-2 district championship to their repertoire Friday night as they downed Sutton 3-2 in the final match at Friend. The two teams met three times this season. Thayer Central won the district final in five sets; 25-18, 25-13, 24-26, 16-25, 15-12.
The victory placed them as the No. 2 seed in the Class C2 state tournament scheduled to begin this Thursday, Nov. 11. The Lady Titans (27-2) will take on No. 7 Bridgeport (21-9) at 12:30 p.m., at the Hastings High School gymnasium. Semifinals move to Grand Island Sacred Heart, Nov. 12 at 6:30 p.m., and the final contest will be played at the Grand Island Heartland Event Center on Saturday, Nov. 13, at 8:30 p.m.
In the contest against Sutton, Thayer Central burst onto the court with two quick wins against the Fillies, but a switched lineup on the Sutton side handed the Lady Titans some trouble in the third set. Titans coach, Kurk Wiedel, said the Sutton adjustment caused Thayer Central to commit some errors on serve receive and serving in the middle of the set handing Sutton the edge. “We were in complete control of this game until we started to have some serve receive and serving errors,” he said. “We lost some of our composure in the fourth set as well.”
The Fillies took the momentum from there to win both the third and fourth games.
In the final set, Coach Wiedel said getting the team’s passing back in control made the difference. “Once we did that, we could get it outside quicker and get away from their block,” he said. “We went back to playing solid defense and used our strength at the net to beat Sutton for the third time.”
Bridgette Baden led at the net posting 25 kills in the contest. Cody Long had 21 while Kinsey Tietjen and Michaela Marsh each had three. Kelsey Long had two kills. Tietjen led the defense with four blocks. Marsh had three and K. Long had two. Claire Timmerman provided 50 assists in the game.