Libby falls in quarters to Billings Central

BOZEMAN — The Libby Loggers will be kicking themselves for this one for awhile.

They dispatched Stevensville in the opening round of the Class A state volleyball tournament on Thursday 25-15, 25-19, 25-15, but then turned in a mistake-filled effort in the quarterfinals against Billings Central.

Central, the No. 1 seed from Eastern A, downed Libby 25-17, 25-16, 25-18.

Libby middle hitter Jackie Mee may have said it best.

She told Loggers coach Cindy Ostrem-Johnston the Loggers played great last weekend against Polson in divisional, but it just wasn’t the same team on the court against Billings Central.

“She said, ‘I think we just thought it was going to happen naturally,’” Ostrem-Johnston reported.

“Problem is, we have not played like that all year — until last weekend. So, it’s not going to happen naturally. They have to make it happen,” the coach said.

The Loggers have today to make it happen. They will play a loser-out match at 2 p.m. against the winner to this morning’s Polson-Hardin match at 10.

Polson lost in the first round to Anaconda 25-23, 25-21, 25-18.

“I didn’t think we played to our capacity. I thought we played frustrated and mad part of the time. And we don’t play well that way,” Ostrem-Johnston said.

“I told them I thought we lost it because of lack of discipline,” she said.

“We didn’t stay with (the Rams) ... and I think we could have if we had played like we did last weekend.”

Mee had 20 kills on the night — but no one else on the Logger team had more than two kills.

On the other side of the net, Billings Central got a combined 27 kills from senior outside hitters Catie Hanser and Kelsie Ray. It also got contributions from three other hitters — Tayler Eubank, Marissa Stanton and Kalli Sizemore all had blocks and kills for the Rams.

“We came out ready to go. We had a great start,” Ostrem-Johnston said.

Libby started the match with an ace by Alex Kulbeck. Logan Best got a kill on the next point and Mee blocked a Ram shot on the third point.

The Loggers led 3-0, and were up 5-2 when they missed their first serve.

That gave the ball back to Central — and that was the last Libby saw of the lead in that game.

“In the second game, we missed three serves at the beginning of the game — and we still had the lead. We could have given ourselves a nice cushion there,” Ostrem-Johnston said.

Instead, the Loggers dropped the ball into the net and then shanked a couple of passes.

“We made too many mistakes. (The Rams) played great against us, their outsides were killing us. But we didn’t step up and do our job.

“We made serving errors when we shouldn’t have, and hitting errors and we didn’t take care of the ball.”

And with all of that ... the Loggers were still in every game.

“It’s not like they blew us out of the water, but we kind of took ourselves out of it,” Ostrem-Johnston said.