GODFREY — For the second week in a row Alton High School housed a girls' volleyball tournament.
After the Redbirds were champions of the Redbird Classic, they were only able to muster third at the Alton Invite on Saturday. Fort Zumwalt North garnered the top spot with the Roxana Shells earning second place. The rest of the field rounded out with: Carrollton, Civic Memorial and Jersey.
FZN went 5-0 to nab the title. The Panthers and Shells met on Saturday afternoon, both undefeated and proving to be the championship match of the round robin tourney.
Roxana gave a valiant effort, but ultimately fell 25-21, 25-13. Head coach Mike McKinney was proud of the efforts of his squad in the tournament.
“This is a great way to find out where we're at, what we need to work on,” McKinney said. “I think we played excellent all five matches. Playing against good teams can only make you better and I think the effort we gave this whole tournament to win four matches, our girls are excited. Yeah you want to win the championship, but when you come in and have to play these teams, you can play really well and go 0-5. We found a way to win four and I'm ecstatic for them, they're ecstatic and hopefully we build off that for the rest of the season.”
The Shells started with a 25-19, 25-23 win over Jersey and an 18-25, 25-19, 15-11 victory over CM on Friday. They then opened Saturday play with a 26-24, 25-23 triumph over the host Redbirds and a 25-10, 25-15 win over Carrollton before drawing FZN.
Roxana opened strong against the Panthers, trading blows with them and taking leads of 10-9 and 11-10 midway through the match and later 20-19 and 21-20. Senior Taylor Westfall, who was named to the all-tournament team with fellow Shell Braeden Lackey, provided five kills in Game 1.
FZN proved too much at the net late in the game though. Mya Young supplied a kill and all-tournament selection Jaime Hauser hammered home three kills over the Panthers' final five-point run to win the opening game.
Game 2 was all FZN. Tournament MVP Tiana Jackson flexed her muscles at the net, providing superb blocking, three kills and an ace in the win.
A seven-point spree gave the Panthers a 15-3 lead and a later six-point spurt made it 23-11 as Roxana could never find an answer for the dominant net play.
“We played a very hard fought first game, but once they got into that second game and got on a roll we couldn't stop them,” McKinney said. “They had two good runs on us and we did everything we could but it wasn't enough. Congratulations to them, they earned it.”
McKinney was happy to see Westfall and Lackey make the all-tourney team, but admitted it was a total team effort over the two days.
“They get the award for being all-tournament, but everyone of our kids did a great job. Lackey and Westfall I'm guessing had about 55 kills each in this tournament. We relied on them and kept setting them again and again.
“Westfall is our leader, her, (Niah) Bevolo and (Abby) Palen are the seniors and Lackey is a quiet leader, she just gets the job done. She doesn't do much
