The Times - Serving Waitsburg, Dayton and the Touchet Valley

WAITSBURG - Time is running out for the Lady Cards to qualify for the No­vember 2 league tourna­ment, which makes Thursday night's loss to Tri Cities Prep all the more disappointing.

"Only four teams qualify for the league tournament," said WP Coach Angie Potts. "We either need to win two and DeSales doesn't win another match, or we need to beat DeSales and force a tie breaker match."

The Jaguars took a strong lead in set one of Thursday's match, maintaining it to win the set 25-12. "In the first set we started out really slow and were slow getting into de­fensive position," said Potts. "TCP was hitting the spots where we should have been on the defense.

The Lady Cards showed improvement in set two, bringing the score to 8-6 (TCP favor) before losing the set 25-17.

Set three was a nail-biter. Aggressive serves by Saman­tha Fedderson and Caitlin Mohney coupled with an improved defense found the teams battling head-to-head throughout the set.

"The girls started to rec­ognize where they needed to be on defense and got to their positions a little quicker so they had more time to react," Said Potts. "Mohney and Paige Wood did a great job of digging some hard hit balls. Analise Salazar and Enedina Fuentes were able to read the tips and picked up everything short while Fedderson ran down a lot of balls sent to the corners."

Above: WP players surprise team manager Katie Bryant with a birthday song and hugs after team introductions.

Fedderson made a memo­rable save, running partway up the bleachers, and hope was in the air with a score of 21-21 toward the end of the set. The teams remained a point apart until TCP man­aged the final point to win the set 25-23 and took the game.

Jaidyn Brown made 12 assists, two kills and six digs. Samantha Fedderson dished out nine kills, 12 digs, six blocks, and scored three aces. Paige Wood spiked six kills and blocked four hits. Enedina Fuentes made three kills and nine digs. Analise Salazar played strong de­fense with 10 digs and Cait­lin Mohney made six digs and served up three aces.

WP takes on the Dayton Bulldogs on Tuesday at Day­ton's court. To qualify for the League tournament the Cards will need to win both the Dayton match and the Oct. 17 away match against Asotin or beat DeSales on Oct. 24.

WPs senior volleyball players and cross-country runners will be honored pri­or to a 'just-for-fun' home­coming week Alumni match at 6 p.m. on Oct. 22.