SILOAM SPRINGS — It was smooth sailing for the Siloam Springs Lady Panthers this week during the Class 5A Volleyball Tournament as the team took home three straight wins and a trip to its sixth consecutive state championship.

The Panthers faced off with Little Rock Mills in the first round of tournament action Tuesday. As hosts of the tournament, the Panthers had the home court advantage.

The team made quick work of the No. 4 seed in the 5A-East and was able to get the 3-0 victory in just 44 minutes. The final score was 25-11, 25-9, 25-7.

Panthers head coach Rose Cheek said her girls were ready to play from the getgo, even though she called Mills an “athletic and scrappy team.”

“We were just ready to play ball,” Cheek said. “All the girls played really well.”

Although the Lady Panthers gave up the first point in the first two sets the team quickly corrected and Mills never led after that.

Leading the team in that match, and also throughout the tournament, was junior Lizzy Briones and seniors Hannah Allison and Staci Williamson.

Williamson came out with seven kills and led the team’s 14 aces with five.

Briones contributed seven kills of her own and added four aces. Allison led in kills with eight.

Up next the team took on the No. 2 seed from the East Paragould in the second round of the tournament on Wednesday.

Although the scene was slightly different than the previous match, the Panthers were still able to come out strong and took Paragould Lady Ramsdown in three sets 25-12, 25-19, 25-16.

With a record of 17-3 at the time, the Lady Rams were no easy match for Siloam’s strong offense. After losing thefirst set, the team gave the Panthers a scare when it took a 9-3 lead in the second set.

But the Panthers weren’t finished. SSHS was able to regroup in the third set and finish out strong with a 6-2 spurt to finish the match.

Leading the team with an all-around performance was Allison with 12 kills, 16 assists and two aces. She also helped out defensively with two blocking assists and one solo block.

Briones was up next, leading the team with 13 kills and eight blocking assists.

Thursday presented a little bit more competition for the Lady Panthers as they took on Greene County Tech in semifinal action.

Although the team got the win in three sets, GCT matched up well with SSHS. The final set scores were 25-20, 25-16, 25-19.

Cheek called GCT a “very good, very well-coached team.” She said the team immediately singled out a few of her players as targets.

Briones was one of those players, but was up to the challenge.

“By the second set Lizzie was giving the [GTC] servers the signal,” Cheek said. “She was like ‘bring it on.’”

And she certainly did.

Briones led the team in kills with 18 and also tallied six block assists and two solo blocks. Allison was right behind her in stats, putting up yet another stellar performance with eight kills, 19 assists, seven aces and seven digs.

Williamson led in digs with 16.

Allison said that, overall, she thought the Lady Panthers performed well for the tournament.

“We just had to stay calm and play our game,” she said.

Allison said of the three matches, the one against GCT was the most fun and also the most evenly matched.

“It was so much fun with our crowd there. We never get a crowd like that,” she said. “We also matched up better to their style of play than we did with the otherteams, so they were much more fun to play.”

Mills and Paragould tended to be more defensively minded while GCT matched Siloam in offensive emphasis.

The Lady Panthers advanced to their sixth consecutive shot at a state title on Saturday against Greenwood in Jonesboro.

It will be the fourth state championship against Greenwood for Allison and also her most bittersweet.

She signed with the University of Texas and will begin there next fall.

“Each year has been different and cool in it’s own way,” she said. “I’ve justbeen in the program so long and we have so much pride and competition playing for Siloam. It’s just been really special.”

Cheek said that past match-ups against Greenwood have always gone to five sets but that her girls are focused on getting this last win.

“They are not even focused on [the fact that it’s the championship game],” she said. “For us it’s just another game, you know, get it done.”

The Lady Panthers, who have put up a 35-3 overall record this season and gone undefeated in the 5A-West with 14-0, are ready, Cheeksaid.

“We want to get this win.

They have been ready for this since last year,” she said.

(Editor’s note: Results of the state championship game were not finalized before presstime. See Wednesday’s Herald-Leader for the score.)

Sports, Pages 10 on 11/01/2009

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