ST. MARYS — After losing to DuBois three times during the regular season, the Bradford Lady Owls were hoping to have their fortunes change against a long-time rival on the biggest of stages.
But it wasn’t meant to be, as the top-seeded Lady Beavers swept Bradford (25-8, 25-9, 25-14) to capture their second consecutive District 9 Class AAA volleyball title Saturday morning at St. Marys High School.
DuBois (17-2) cemented its place as one of the top volleyball programs in D-9 with a dominant performance from start to finish. The Lady Beavers jumped out to big leads in each of the three sets and capitalized on plenty of Lady Owl mistakes throughout the morning.
“I’d like to say it was nerves, but when you go against a tough opponent and you start to slip, you’re not going to get your head back up above water,” Bradford coach Steve Daniels said after the match.
Bradford (9-9) was outscored 50-17 over the first two sets, largely due to their inability to receive DuBois’ serves.
After such a dominant performance by his team in a three-set sweep over Punxsutawney in Wednesday’s semifinal match, Daniels admitted that he did not see foresee his team’s struggles.
“We came out so well against Punxsy (receiving serves), that if you would have told me that we were going to serve receive poorly this game, I wouldn’t of believed you for everything,” he said.
Daniels called four timeouts over the first two sets in hopes of rallying his team, but to no avail.
DuBois was especially controlling late in the sets, taking seven of the final nine points in the first, and six of the final seven in the second.
The third set began promising for the Lady Owls, as they took an early 2-0 lead (their first of the match) and seized on some momentum following two nice rallies.
But after a prolonged conference with the officials, it was ruled that Bradford hadn’t rotated properly, therefore taking those two early points — and the lead — off the board.
Daniels took full ownership of his error after the match.
“That was on me,” he said. “I tried to flip the lineup a little bit and kind of screwed it all up. It was a huge hiccup by me and I told the girls that. Sorry seniors, I didn’t like that the last set of the year is the one I screwed up on.”
The Owls stayed close in that final set, and scored on some impressive kills to trail DuBois by just 12-8 halfway through the third. But the Lady Beavers got rolling again and outscored Bradford 13-6 to close out the set and the match with a 25-14 victory.
“You can factor in a lot of things, but I can never say that we didn’t play hard or that we didn’t belong here,” Daniels said. “We are going to grow from this as a program and hopefully get better.”
Ashton Himes led the Lady Owls with nine kills and five digs, while Laney Kahle logged 15 assists.
Saturday’s championship loss capped off what has been an up-and-down season for the Lady Owls. Despite plenty of tough, five-set losses, the Owls always seemed to bounce back and were able to earn a spot in the title game for the first time since they won it all in 2015.
“Our league is tough,” Daniels said. “I mean if Kane were here today we would have three teams in the finals (from our league). That’s something that we pride ourselves on and our league prepares us for what we’re going to see.”
“I’ll be sorry to see the seniors go, but I think we have a great junior class coming up and I’m really excited about the lower classes coming up too — if they’ll have me.”
St. Marys was also the host site of the D-9 Class A and Class AA finals on Saturday. Clarion swept Ridgway to capture the Class A crown, whileRedbank Valley swept Brookville in the AA final.
