Lady Cats finish regular season with win

By Shawn Lee
UCA sportswriting

The Conway Lady Cats finished the regular season Thursday with a sweep of Little Rock Christian, 25-15, 25-15, 25-20.

Conway will enter next week's Class 7A State Tournament at Van Buren 24-4. The Lady Cats finished the 7A-Central round-robin a perfect 14-0.

The season finale was a Dig Pink match, intended to raise funds and awareness for breast cancer. Dig Pink is the foundation that helps coordinate fundraising through volleyball. Raffle tickets were available for $2 and were entered for a drawing of a various range of prizes, from gift cards to local restaurants and businesses and even an iPod nano donated by Best Buy.

"It's important that we try to raise awareness for a cure and hopefully we do find one," Conway coach Laura Crow said. "We were hoping to raise around $2,000, and we were pretty close."

The Lady Cats, dressed in pink jerseys, took an early lead in Game 1 as the Lady Warriors made numerous net violations. Seniors Jasmyn Wilkins and Mary Dunlap contributed three kills each while junior Maddie Shipp put in two aces to take the win, 25-15.

Little Rock Christian seemed to take charge at the beginning of Game 2, 3-0, but the tables turned soon when seniors Breezy Murphy and Amy Fletcher put in five kills back-to-back. This broke the Lady Warriors' momentum and the game ended soon, 25-15. Breezy Murphy had six kills for this game and 10 for the night. Senior Payton Hart had 17 assists in Game 2 alone — every kill by the Lady Cats besides her own. Hart had 35 assists for the night.

Senior Alexis Robertson started Game 3 with an ace, but Little Rock Christian returned with a kill and an ace.

"They [Little Rock Christian] really came back swinging," Crow said.

The game remained close as the teams exchanged leads until Robertson came back with two more aces. Dunlap, who won a free haircut from the raffles, ended the game 25-20, with her eighth kill of the match. Alexis Robertson had three aces for the night as well as 24 digs.

Conway will take the Central's top seed and first-round bye into the state tournament for the fourth consecutive year. The Lady Cats will play in Wednesday's second round against the winner of the first-round match between Fort Smith Southside and Russellville. Conway will play Wednesday, Oct. 28 at 4 p.m.