By Trey Hunter
Sports Editor
BETHANY – Tom Williams saw it building over the last couple of weeks.
His Wildcats needed a win or two after a tough schedule littered with ranked teams and teams from Class 6A. Saturday at the Bethany Tournament, Piedmont showed improvement all around, picked up two wins, reached the gold bracket semifinals and battled hard in three losses.
“It’s been building for the last week or so,” Williams said. “We fought hard against Yukon and Ponca City last week and came over here and from the beginning set the tone.”
The Cats fell to Bethany in the first match, 2-1, but battled back in the second set against the Bronchos to tie it 1-1. They bounced back with a 2-1 win over Class 4A Elgin in the second match followed by a 2-0 win over Blanchard in the third.
“Against Elgin, we came out a little flat and lost the first set, but got our act together and won the next two,” Williams said. “And then against Blanchard we struggled in the first set, but won and then crushed them in the second. That’s something we needed to do.”
Piedmont fell 2-1 to Weatherford in the gold bracket semifinals. The Cats dropped the first set 25-17, but won the second 25-16 and battled in the third, falling by just two points.
“It was a good match,” Williams said. “We beat them handily in the second set to tie it up and then in the third, we’re down 13-12 before a call that should have gone our way gave them a 14-12 lead. Then unfortunately our next serve goes out of bounds.
“We showed a lot of fight. We tried to go win the match instead of waiting for the other team to lose it. We didn’t roll over, which is a good sign going forward.”
Freshman Kaylie Marshall was named to the All-Tournament team after leading the Cats with 29 kills on 55 attempts. She also finished with three aces and just one error on 19 serves.
“For the whole day she (Marshall) had four hitting errors,” Williams said. “That’s impressive. Several were on balls that she just went up and hammered. She had the mentality of give them to me and I’ll make you pay for it.”
Sophomore Joanna Hunter finished with 25 kills in the tournament while junior Gracie Myatt finished with 22. Hunter also led the team with 41 set assists while freshman Heather Houston finished with 36.
Sophomore Leyla Rallo led the team with a 96-percent clip on serves with just one error on 27 attempts. Defensively, Myatt led the way with 44 digs while senior Chloe Parker finished with 26.
The Wildcats travel to Class 6A Enid Tuesday before hitting the road again Thursday for another 6A match up at Shawnee. They return home Sept. 26 to host Weatherford.
