Kowboys host Tohopekaliga in regional playoffs Wednesday
The Lady Kowboy volleyball team will start defense of its Region 2 championship at home. Osceola earned that right on Thursday night with a 25-20, 25-20, 25-21 straight-set win at Lake Nona to capture the District 7A-6 championship.
Also Thursday, Gateway (17-8), the No. 1 seed in the District 5A-6 tournament, won the title with a 25-18, 25-11, 25-17 win over Lake Wales.
Regional quarterfinals will be held Wednesday, and the Kowboys will see a familiar foe. They will host Tohopekaliga (20-6), who OHS defeated in the Orange Belt Conference championship earlier this month, at 7 p.m. The winner plays the Olympia-Windermere winner on Saturday.
Gateway, the Region 2 No. 5 seed, will host Satellite (17-9) on Wednesday.
Thursday’s win was far different than a regular season match between the two schools on Sept. 20 at Osceola, where the Lions took the Lady Kowboys to a fifth set before Osceola won it 15-11.
“We really spent a lot of time watching that match and it helped us understand how they were trying to attack us,” OHS Coach Carrie Palmi said. “We put together a defensive game plan that neutralized them, especially early in the match.”
Osceola opened the match with four straight points and never looked back. An early 5-1 run built the lead to 12-5 and Lake Nona never got closer than four points the rest of the way. Sophomores Jordin Southall and Cate Palmi combined for 11 kills, a block and an ace in that first set.
It was more the same in the second set. The teams battled to a 5-5 tie before a 5-1 run put the Kowboys up 10-6. They would build the lead to 14-9 before a big 5-2 run pushed the lead to 19-11. While Southall came up big with six kills in the set, it was Sophie Spivey – another sophomore and Osceola’s third option on the attack – that really helped spur the two-set advantage. Spivey had five kills, two blocks for points and an ace in the first two sets.
“We have two great attack players in Jordin and Kate, which really opens a lot of things up for us offensively because Sophie can really be effective too,” Palmi said. “She had a great match tonight.”
The teams would battle back-and-forth with no more than three points separating the teams for most of the third set. Southall’s seventh kill of the set though keyed a 4-1 run as Osceola built a 21-17 lead. Two ball-handling errors by Lake Nona would push the lead to 24-19, before Osceola returned the favor with two return errors to make it 24-21. On match point, a Lake Nona return went wide and Osceola had the sweep.
For the match, Southall had 21 kills and block; Palmi added 15 kills with a pair of aces and Spivey finished with six kills, two blocks and an ace. Brooklyn Spivey, Osceola’s 6-4 freshman middle blocker, also was effective with five kills and four blocks – two of which went for points.
Senior outside hitter Anna Pantano led the Lions with 10 kills and four aces; Emma Gongora had eight kills and two blocks.
