Freshman Cate Palmi had a match-high 24 kills, including five in a decisive fifth set, as the Osceola Kowboys defeated Lake Nova in come-from-behind fashion (19-25, 25-21, 23-25, 25-19, 15-11) to claim the Class 7A, District 6 championship Thursday at OHS. It was Osceola’s ninth district championship.
The win moved the top-seeded Kowboys to 23-4 on the season and will give the Lady Kowboys at least one more home game this season as they will host a regional quarterfinal game on Wednesday, Oct. 25. As District runner-up with a high state ranking, Lake Nona (16-6) most likely will move on as an at-large team. Those playoff berths and brackets will be announced by the FHSAA early Sunday afternoon. Check FHSAA.com and AroundOsceola.com for details.
Osceola was not the only county team competing for a district title Thursday. In Class 6A, Region 7, second seeded St. Cloud (13-12) dropped a four-set road decision (25-18, 25-14, 22-25, 25-14) to top-seeded Lakeland; while Gateway advanced to the Class 5A, District championship with impressive wins over Bartow (25-14, 25-8, 25-13) and Auburndale (27-25, 25-20, 22-25, and 28-16). But in the championship game against Lake Wales (14-4), the top-seeded Panthers lost a five-set heartbreaker to the Highlanders (25-22, 24-26, 16-25, 25-19, 15-17). Both St. Cloud and Gateway will now wait to see if they garner and at-large bid to the regional playoffs.
“Overall, I thought we played a pretty solid game. We started a little sloppy and fell behind but getting Eimy Negron back after missing nine games with injury was a big lift for us. But it really was a total team win tonight,” Osceola Coach Carrie Palmi said. “Give Nona a lot of credit though; they certainly improved greatly from when we played them the first time.”
It was a far cry from when the teams met in a regular season back on Sept. 9 and the Kowboys walked away with an easy 25-21, 25-17, 21-18 sweep of the Lions.
Lake Nona would jump on top early in in the match after the teams swapped points and the score was tied 11-11 in the first game before Lake Nona went on a 9-3 run to take a 20-14 lead and cruise to a six-point win. Osceola then had to rally from a 9-3 deficit in the second set to level the match at one game each.
Senior Kaitlyn Taylor played a key role in the comeback with nine kills – including two that put Osceola ahead for the first time in the set at 21-20 and a third one that pushed the Kowboys to set point at 24-21. The Kowboys looked poised to easily the third set when they had the serve and a 23-20 lead, but several ball handling errors and a service ace Nona’s Jerielys Giraud sparked a 4-1 run and after a long rally Anna Pantano found a hole in the Osceola defense and tapped it over the net for the game-winning point.
Set four appeared to be an easy win for the Kowboys as they jumped out to leads of 15-6 and 20-11, but the Lions came roaring back behind the outstanding play of outside hitter Emma Gongora and some several ball handling errors by Osceola. But after Lake Nona had cut the lead to 22-18, a thunderous spike by Taylor and a double hit by Nona gave the Kowboys the 25-19 victory in the game to set up the “Race to 15” final set.
With the score tied 5-5 in the final set, Osceola used a 3-0 mini-run to take an 8-5 lead. After trading points, a Palmi spike upped the lead to 13-9 and another big spike from Palmi three points later gave the Kowboys match-point. After a long rally, a Taylor kill gave Osceola the game and match.
For the contest, Cate Palmi had two big blocks to go with her 24 kills. Taylor added 22 kills and an ace; while senior Ahnika Johnston nine kills and three big blocks.
“Ahnika had a great game for us tonight. She communicated well defensively and really made some key plays with her ball placement,” Palmi added.
