Playing at home on a brand new court for the first time nearly a month into the season, the Labette Cardinals fell in four sets, 3-1 (23-25, 25-10, 25-20, 25-20) to the Independence Pirates in KJCCC play on Wednesday night.
Labette claimed a twopoint victory in the first set and held leads in the next three sets, but ended up dropping the match.
“That’s how we’ve been all season,” Labette head coach Haley Cook said. “That’s how we’ve been all season. We haven’t been able to find consistency through-and-through. I said at the beginning of the game that this game would come down to who committed less errors. That team wasn’t us tonight.”
The Cardinals struggled with a variety of errors, particularly on passing and serve receive, throughout the night.
“We had a lot of communication errors,” Cook said. “We haven’t found the ability to step up and take accountability for our own actions. We look for something else to blame instead of taking ownership.”
For a team that feels it can earn a postseason berth by finishing seventh or better in the KJCCC, a win over Independence felt like a musthave. The loss means the Cardinals will have to truly hunt the rest of the way.
“We’ve still got quite a few conference teams to go play,” Cook said. “Within those conference teams are Johnson County and Cowley. We’ve got to start stepping up and winning games we can win. We aren’t going to win until we can do some serious self-reflection on where the issues lie.”
Independence’s Axelle Allais- Noblesse led the Pirates with 13 kills. Jayla Flient added nine, Annabelle Lovelace had eight and Parsons native Dakiah Yates chipped in seven.
Valeria Martinez-Vargas amassed 32 assists while Sophia Reyes had 19 digs for the Pirates.
Stats were unavailable for Labette at press time.
The Cardinals dropped to 2-12 overall and 1-3 in KJCCC play. Independence improved to 4-11 and 1-4, respectively.
Wednesday also marked the debut of Labette’s new court at it’s gym.
“It was nice to be back home and nice to have our home crowd. At the end of the day, we didn’t do our job that our crowd needed us to do,” Cook said.
Up next
Labette hosts a set of home matches on Saturday against a pair of JVs — John Brown and Oklahoma Wesleyan.
“John Brown has always pushed us to play higher,” Cook said. “If we can’t find some consistency in our communication and play together, the outcome won’t be what we want it to be.”
