Northside nearly staved off getting swept in Tuesday’s 7A-Central volleyball match against the team leading the conference.

Conway, however, showed why it is in first place. The Lady Wampus Cats scored the last three points of the third set to pull out a 26-24 win and ending up winning all three sets against the Lady Bears (25-12, 25-14, 26-24) at Kaundart-Grizzly Fieldhouse.

“They’re an excellent team, we knew that coming in. ... I don’t think we came out ready to play; we’ve been trying to find ways to do a better job of that and we were very slow to start (Tuesday),” Northside coach Matt Waack said. “I felt like the second game, we finally turned a corner and started to play.

“My girls did show some fight and came back out in game three, and felt like we were really getting after them and finding ways to score. Just a little too little, too late; Conway was able to hang on. If we could’ve done that a little earlier, I think maybe we would have had a shot.”

In the third set, Northside (7-5-1, 2-2) trailed 11-7 before chipping away and eventually taking a 20-17 lead.

Conway (9-3, 4-0) promptly reeled off five straight points to go in front but the Lady Bears answered back, grabbing a 24-23 lead on Nicole Medlin’s kill.

On the next point, a kill by Conway’s Marlee Scaife tied it before Satera Scott delivered back-to-back kills to end the match in the Lady Wampus Cats’ favor.

“That’s the team (Northside) I see every day in practice, and I know that they’re capable of that,” Waack said of the Lady Bears’ fight in the third set. “We’ve got to find a way to bring it. ... We’ve been missing it for some reason, I don’t know what we’re missing but we’re going to have to find some answers and keep plugging away, just see if we can get better because we’ve got to go to North Little Rock on the road Thursday and they’re good.

“If we still want to be a contender in this conference or anything, we’ve got to keep working to get better.”

Conway took control in the opening set by scoring eight of the first nine points, capped by a kill from 6-foot-2 senior hitter Kendahl Davenport, who entered Tuesday’s match as the team leader in that category with 83. The Lady Wampus Cats later built an 18-4 advantage.

In the second set, Conway was up by two (9-7) before pulling away with a 14-6 spurt. Blaklee Scott’s ace ended the run as the Lady Wampus Cats forged a 23-13 lead.

Junior hitter Nakiah Willis finished with nine kills for Northside, four coming in the third set. Senior hitter Chloe Fitzgerald added five kills, while senior libero Sydney Green recorded 19 digs and had three aces.
