<\/p>\n
THE COLONY— The Colony High School was the site for a pair of bi-district battles Thursday as the volleyball postseason began across the area.<\/p>\n
Fresh off back-to-back District 6-6A championships, Plano West welcomed Marcus back into the playoff fray, and while the Lady Marauders proved valiant, the Lady Wolves were simply too much to handle in a straight-set sweep on neutral ground (25-8, 25-16, 25-19) in Class 6A Division II action.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey knew what they had to do tonight,\u201d said West head coach Cooper Phillips. \u201cIn a perfect world, I don\u2019t have to do much. I\u2019m vocal as a coach, and they were vocal as well. It wasn\u2019t anything crazy we did, we just did the right thing.\u201d<\/p>\n
West (27-5, 14-2) senior Brooklyn Poerner opened the scoring in the third set that saw the most back-and-forth. Junior setter Lola Peters found senior hitter Armie Hall and a pair of violations saw West jump out to a 5-2 lead.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re really excited. We\u2019re really close as a team, so getting a win and playing together is fun and exciting,\u201d said Hall. \u201cWe did have messy moments, but we stayed together as a team and thought about what we can do next to beat hard teams like Marcus.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s an opportunity because being ranked high, especially in 6A, you have to prove to people why we\u2019re ranked that way.\u201d<\/p>\n
Marcus (18-20, 8-6) sophomore setter Annie Easton found fellow sophomore Madilyn Brito to make it 5-4 before a string of net violations and shots landing out of bounds helped West produce a three-point lead.<\/p>\n
Poerner released a serve that was received but bounced straight back to Hall, who was ready, slamming it back over the net before Peters found her for a traditional kill on the next point, making it 12-7 Lady Wolves.<\/p>\n
Senior hitter Emerson Ortmeier and junior Emily Bazelais were able to maximize on four Easton assists that brought the score to 16-12.<\/p>\n
Senior Katelyn Vo served an ace ahead of another pair of Peters assists, extending the West advantage to 23-16.<\/p>\n
Ortmeier added another kill off an assist from junior setter Ainsley Goff before a Bazelais kill marked the final Lady Marauder point of the set, the match and the season, closing the third set 25-19.<\/p>\n
To open the contest, West had the pedal to the metal. Peters found Hall for the first point of the match and an ace from sophomore Campbell Arnold gave them a 5-1 lead. Another Peters-Hall connection drew a timeout at 7-1 and senior Blaire Bowers added another before Marcus could grab another point.<\/p>\n
Senior Elizabeth Oh connected with Peters for two kills, showing her versatility as both a setter and a hitter, before a Peters block at the net gave West a double-digit lead at 14-4. Oh and Peters continued to take turns notching assists until Oh served three aces across six points to close a dominating set, 25-8. Of those eight Marcus points, four came from out-of-bounds West serves.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn that first set, we came out strong,\u201d said Phillips. \u201cAnd even most of their points were ones we gave up. Not many teams are going to do that twice.\u201d<\/p>\n
And Phillips\u2019 sentiment was proven correct with Marcus doubling their output in the second set. Ortmeier and senior Ashtyn Good got Marcus out to a 3-1 lead before Easton and Brito made it 6-2.<\/p>\n
West pushed back in uncommon fashion, with three straight blocks at the net for points from junior Blair Sims, Bowers and Peters.<\/p>\n
The teams traded points up through 13-13 before Poerner and Peters took the set over. Poerner teamed up with Bowers for a block and then added two kills, two assists and a Marcus net violation sparked a six-point push.<\/p>\n
Easton found Ortmeier twice, but Peters added two kills and two assists to put West up two sets to zero, 25-16.<\/p>\n
West will advance to the area round and face the winner of Arlington and Irving Nimitz.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"THE COLONY— The Colony High School was the site for a pair of bi-district battles Thursday as the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":30161,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[254,251,253,160,162,161,252,20261],"class_list":["post-30160","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-plano","tag-breaking-news","tag-local-news","tag-newsbreak","tag-plano","tag-plano-headlines","tag-plano-news","tag-plano-star-courier","tag-plano-west-powers-past-young-marcus-team-in-first-round-sweep"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30160","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30160"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30160\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30161"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30160"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30160"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30160"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}