For The Tribune
COLUMBUS
Saturday’s Columbus East volleyball Invitational featured a lot of ranked teams that made the competition fierce.
Seymour did a lot of good things but wound up finishing in sixth place while Brownstown Central had its struggles a bit early on before a strong finish to come in seventh.
Columbus East won the tournament when they defeated Bloomington South in the championship.
The eight teams in the tournament were divided into two pools, with the Owls and the Braves in the same pool.
In the round robin play for Seymour, they lost to Covenant Christian 25-23, 25-20.
The Owls then topped the Braves 25-15, 25-20.
In the Owls’ final game in pool play, they defeated Bloomington South 25-19, 22-25, 25-23.
The Owls got a tough break when there was a three-way tie for first place and lost in all the tiebreaker scenarios to settle for third place in the pool.
In the fifth-place game, the Owls lost to Indianapolis Cardinal Ritter 13-25, 25-14, 28-30.
Lauren Fleetwood finished with 29 kills and three aces for the Owls.
Claire Myers had 20 kills and Addie Rudge had 19 kills.
Cecily Hoffman and Emily Cocoran both had eight aces.
“There were some times we were mentally out of it but overall we did pretty well against some very good competition,” Seymour assistant coach Scott Sage said. “All four teams we faced were pretty solid. We are a young team with sophomores playing a key role in our system. Our seniors played well because it was a very long day.”
For the Braves, they lost to Bloomington South 25-17, 25-14. After losing to the Owls, they fell to Covenant Christian 25-22, 20-25, 13-25.
In the seventh-place game, the Braves downed East Central 25-16, 25-21.
“It’s early in the season and we got some young players so it is going to take us a while to get there,” Brownstown coach Jennifer Shade said. “I want to start seeing what we work on in practice happen during a game. We have had a lot of practice time so we were glad just to be able to play a game. As long as we see improvement each game, then we feel like we done what we were supposed to do.”
Keeli Darlage led the Braves with 14 kills and three aces.
Claire Pace finished with 15 kills, Grace Jaynes added 11 kills and an ace and Richayla Huff had four aces.