Volleyball falls in straight sets at No. 7-ranked Johnson County

The Cowley College volleyball team continues to battle, but are finding conference wins hard to come by as they suffered a 25-22, 25-23, 25-22 loss to No. 7-ranked Johnson County Tuesday in Overland Park, KS.

Cowley was the first to 20 in all three sets, but were unable to come away with the win.

"Johnson County managed to put us in situations where we could not get stops at key times in the match," Cowley head coach Steven Gream said.

The loss drops the Lady Tigers into ninth place in the Jayhawk Conference Eastern Division as Cowley is now 5-6 overall and 3-6 in conference play.

"We are playing much better than our record shows, we are just not able to close out sets with the match on the line," Gream said.

The Lady Cavaliers (7-1) remain a half game behind Neosho County for first place in the Jayhawk East with a conference mark of 6-1.

Sophomore Iva Halacheva led Cowley with 17 kills.

"Iva had a really good night and kept us in the games," Gream said.

Fellow sophomore Keely Solida added six kills, while freshman Maddy Pitts finished with four kills. Erin Thompson led the Lady Tigers with 18 digs and Gracie Story chipped in with 32 assists.

Cowley will return home to play a pair of matches on Thursday. The Lady Tigers will host Fort Scott at 4 p.m. before taking on the Kansas Wesleyan JV at 8. Fort Scott is currently fifth in the Jayhawk East with a 6-4 conference record. The Lady Greyhounds opened the conference season with a straight set victory over Cowley back on January 25.

"Fort Scott capitalized on our unforced errors the first time we played them," Gream said. "We need to take care of things on our side of the net and try to continue to improve in order to do some leapfrogging in the conference that we need to do."