By Chuck Reherman
Sports Editor
MOORE – After a two week hiatus, Yukon returned to the court with the look of coming away with a win.
After the first two sets in looked like the Millerettes were going to get than win. Then everything went south.
Moore kept the match alive with a win in the third set and went on to win the next two to take a 3-2 win over YHS Thursday night in Moore.
The Millerettes, who had not played in the last 14 days due to a coronavirus quarantine, didn’t seem to show the affects of being off 14 days in the first two sets, but showed up by the third.
Moore won the match 23-25, 20-25, 25-22, 25-21 and 16-14.
“I think we came into the match too comfortable,” Millerette head coach Rachel Allred said. “We lost to Moore last year, but we also know they are not as strong as the Edmond teams and that mindset sunk into us and we came in thinking that we should win.
“There are lots of excuses we could use, but we did not play our best game plain and simple,” Allred said. “We were just happy winning the first two and got comfortable after that. It was the same old story, we got comfortable after the first two wins and then can’t get ourselves back on track. We kind of fell apart after that second one.”
With the match tied at 2-2 it looked like the Millerettes were going to bounce back in the fifth and earn the win.
With the set tied 3-3, a pair of kills from Addy Wimmer helped open a 9-4 lead. She had a third kill for a 10-7 lead. But, Moore came back to tie the set 10-10 and then went up 11-10.
A kill from Rachel Kittell tied things at 12-12 and a Katie Clark kill opened a 13-12 edge.
YHS led 14-13 and was serving for the set and the match, but an unforced error let Moore back in, 14-14. The Lady Lions then used back to back kills to take the set and win the match 16-14.
“In that fifth set we knew we were in trouble and had to get out big,” Allred said. “Then we got in a hole again making silly mistakes. We got quiet in couple times.
“We have to understand that we can’t be just happy winning, but winning like we should,” she said. “We should have won this in three. Serve receive was a struggle and our own serving was a struggle. We missed several key serving mistakes and we had some technical mistakes and it all came back to bite us.”
The Millerettes did have to come back in the first set, trailing 12-6 at one time. YHS was down 20-16, but a pair of Wimmer kills and three Moore mistakes helped the Millerettes to a 24-22 lead. YHS scored the set winner on a tip over from Katelyn Biswell for the 25-22 lead.
The Millerettes did control the tempo of the second set. Moore did come back within 16-15, but YHS used kills from Rachel Kittell, Katie Clark and Taya McReynolds to win the second set 25-20.
The Millerettes had a chance to take control in the third, running off to a 4-0 start,. Moore rally to tie 7-7, then took a 10-7 lead and never gave it up for a 25-22 win.
“It did feel good to get back on the court after 13 days off,” Allred said. “If we would have played like we practiced yesterday we would have been okay. The mindset was our probably and I won’t make any other excuses than that. Mentally we were not ready.”
