Braelynn Kirk took a wicked kill to the face late in the Panthers’ match against Lakeview on Tuesday, but it was the Lakers who ultimately took one on the chin, and it was much more painful.
TMB, playing one of its best all-around matches of the season, defeated the Lakers 27-29, 2518, 25-14, 25-18 in a key Camden Conference South battle.
“This proves we have the ability,” Kirk said. “We’re proving ourselves all the time. We know that we can do it, and we’re proving to everybody that we can do it. This was one of our best games offensively.”
Lakeview entered the match with an impressive 15-7 record and had only lost one Camden Conference South match, but on this night, the Panthers were the ones who were more consistent. TMB’s only downfall in the opening set was its serving. The Panthers committed five service errors in the opening set, including one when they had match point at 27-26. Lakeview would go on to earn the final two points to take the opening set.
“I’m OK with that,” Kamrud-Rice said about the Panthers early service errors. “My philosophy this season is, we’re going to miss some serves, but that’s fine as long as we’re still serving aggressively. The misses came from servers who are traditionally aggressive servers.”
TMB continued that serving mindset the rest of the match, and it paid off. Two aces by Alli Dolan lifted TMB to an 11-7 lead in Set 2, and the Panthers were able to hold a three- to five-point lead the rest of the way to tie the match.
At that point, the Panthers were rolling.
TMB (13-13, 6-3 in the Camden) opened the third set by scoring 11 of the first 15 points, and another Dolan ace later pushed its lead to 23-12. The set ended in TMB’s favor when a Lakeview kill attempt went out of bounds.
TMB had a large number of service aces on the night.
“There were a lot of aces, and that sets us up to play a little bit more loosely,” Kamrud-Rice said. “That allows them to play more freely and be playmakers.”
Kirk said aggressive serving has become a big part of TMB’s game this year and one reason they have been playing so well as of late.
Strong serving, she said, “definitely gets in their heads, gets them out of system, so we can have that free ball and use it to our advantage.”
The momentum stayed on the Panthers’ side in set four, as TMB built a 10-2 lead with the help of two Kirk aces and a pair of Allie Adams kills. The Lakers, winners of nine straight matches earlier this season, were able to come back and pull to within 15-11, but an errant serve curbed their momentum.
After that, Gretchen Lanoue served up an ace for a 19-12 advantage, and Lakeview missed on two serves and failed to return a volley to put TMB one point away from the victory, which Kirk sealed with a kill.
“We knew this could go five sets; Lakeview has been taking sets and taking matches against some really good teams,” Kamrud-Rice said. “Nobody walked into the gym thinking this was going to be easy.”
The loss essentially takes away any chance the Lakers had at capturing the Camden Conference South title, as they are now one-and-a-half games behind first-place Minneota.
The Panthers’ next match is Monday at Renville County West. They wrap up the regular season in Canby on Oct. 22; sub-Section quarterfinals are Oct. 30, with the high seed hosting.
Statistics from Tuesday’s match and last week’s matches were not available for this week’s edition.
