Lady Panthers defeat Bryant, Alma

Bud Sullins/Special to Siloam Sunday Siloam Springs junior Haley Stewart celebrates after the Lady Panthers’ victory against Alma on Tuesday at Panther Activity Center.
Bud Sullins/Special to Siloam Sunday Siloam Springs junior Haley Stewart celebrates after the Lady Panthers’ victory against Alma on Tuesday at Panther Activity Center.

BRYANT -- The Siloam Springs volleyball team won its second straight match Thursday with a 3-1 road win at Bryant (25-18, 33-31, 21-25, 25-22).

The Lady Panthers (9-7, 3-4) finished the first half of 7A/6A-Central Conference play and will begin the second half on Tuesday with a trip to Mount St. Mary.

Siloam Springs was 1-2 against the 6A teams in conference play, losing to Greenwood and Russellville and defeating Alma, and 2-2 against 7A teams, defeating Bryant and Mount St. Mary while losing to Conway and Van Buren.

The Lady Panthers had to survive a wild game two Thursday at Bryant, which they ended up winning 33-31. The Lady Panthers were down twice by substantial margins, 11-6 and 20-16, and were still able to rally and pull out the win.

"The kids never gave up in an awesome, long game two," said coach Rose Cheek-Willis. "They played together tonight as a team better than they have all year. Bryant had a great outside hitter. We blocked her and had some great touches to slow down the ball. Great match."

Baily Cameron and Arika Johnson each had 11 kills to lead the Lady Panthers. Mirna Torres had 10 kills, while Laura Salley and Haley Stewart each had five, Sierra Cifuentes four and Taylor Gay two.

Johnson had 22 assists, while Sidney Avery led with 26 assists.

Cifuentes and Gay each had 28 digs. Madisyn Fullerton and Avery each had 12 digs, while Cameron had 11.

Cameron had two solo blocks, while Johnson had one. Torres had six block assists, while Cameron had five and Salley three.

Avery led with five aces, while Johnson had two.

Siloam Springs 3

Alma 0

The 7A/6A-Central Conference volleyball match between Siloam Springs and Alma on Tuesday was so important, longtime Lady Panthers coach Rose Cheek-Willis didn't even mention its significance before the game.

"I didn't want them to tighten up on me," she said.

The plan worked.

Siloam Springs snapped a five-match losing streak with a 3-0 (25-21, 25-17, 25-18) sweep of the Lady Airedales at Panther Activity Center.

The win not only snapped Siloam Springs' skid, but it also gave the Lady Panthers (8-7, 2-4) a leg up on the Airedales (2-4 in conference) in the race to make the Class 6A playoffs. Both teams came into the game with an 0-2 record in conference games against 6A competition.

"We needed a win bad," Cheek-Willis said. "This was huge. Alma's a good team."

Senior outside hitter Sierra Cifuentes led the Lady Panthers with eight kills, while senior right side Mirna Torres had six aces and was one of three Lady Panthers with four kills on the night.

Senior middles Baily Cameron and Laura Salley also had four kills, while Cameron also contributed three solo blocks and three block assists.

Torres had a kill and three aces in a five-point span in game one as the Lady Panthers went from trailing 6-5 to leading 10-6.

They didn't trail the rest of game one as the Lady Airedales struggled with hitting errors.

The Lady Panthers led all of game two, and two more aces from Torres and an overpass kill from Salley ended the match.

Salley had a pair of kills in a 6-1 run in game three, which allowed Siloam Springs to go up 11-7. She also had two more kills late as Siloam Springs finished off the match.

"They outplayed us," said Alma head coach Tiffaney Drinkwitz. "We had 24 hitting errors. When you have 24 hitting errors against a good team like Siloam Springs you can't expect to win. But Siloam Springs was better than us tonight."

Alma's Aubrey Bailey had 10 kills to lead the Airedales.

-- Herald-Leader staff writer Graham Thomas contributed to this report.

Sports on 09/28/2014