Hounds fall in three on senior night

Junior Mara Smith (2) just misses on a block in the second set Tuesday night at the Hound Dome. The Hounds fell 25-13, 25-11, 25-12 to Burlington in the Hounds' final Southeast Conference regular season matchup.

Photo by Chuck Vandenberg/PCC

GOOD EFFORT

I thought our defense played solid and played hard. It didn’t always look great, but we weren’t just letting balls drop. Things weren’t always going the way we wanted, but they were giving good effort.”

Kelly Knustrom, FMHS head volleyball coach

NEXT UP

The Bloodhounds will play in pool play at Keokuk in the Southeast Conference Tournament Tuesday, Oct. 8

FORT MADISON – The Fort Madison Bloodhounds honored four outgoing seniors Tuesday night in the newly renovated competition gym at Fort Madison High School.
But the energy of those moments didn’t carry over to the volleyball match that followed as Burlington dropped the Hounds in the Southeast Conference regular season finale 25-13, 25-11, 25-12.
The Hounds will be saying goodbye to Olivia Buckner, Taylor Huffman, Brylie Lorence, and Dacee Marshall who will graduate in the summer.
Head Coach Kelly Knustrom said the Lady Hounds may have been a little intimidated by the Grayhounds (5-0, 18-9) coming into the match.
“I kind of just thought maybe we came out a little intimidated and we had some self-doubt about how we thought the game could go,” she said.
But Knustrom said she was impressed with how the girls started and hung with the Grayhounds.
In the first set, Fort Madison stayed with the conference frontrunners trailing just 6-9, and saw some nice digs in the back from Kylie Lumino resulting in some offensive points. However, a 9-3 run broke things open for Burlington and stretched the lead to 18-10 on a couple Fort Madison miscues and two kills and a block from the Grayhounds’ Gemma Plummer.
Burlington would go on another 7-3 run to wrap up the game on a kill from Daphne Brown in the middle.
“In game one, the first couple points we played some good defense and had some good swings. I think there was some mental comparing about how they were getting their kills and how we were getting ours,” Knustrom said.
“At the break I tried to talk them through there is two ways to get things done and it doesn’t always have to be the same way. What we do can be good enough.”
The Grayhounds would jump out to a 9-3 lead in the second set and cruise to the win there, sparked by a 9-0 run from 14-10 to 23-10. Fort Madison would commit five consecutive errors in the run, including three straight attack errors at the net. Brown would get a kill at 22-10 and then Plummer and Sophia Young would put up a block at 24-11 to finish off the second set.
Fort Madison dug another deep hole in the third set trailing my as much as nine at 16-7. They would cut the lead to six at 16-10 when Mackenzie Huebner hit an ace and then McEntee and Brylie Lorence recorded back-to-back kills. The momentum would be short lived, however, as the Grayhounds then raced on a 9-2 run to put the match away.
“Those girls swing hard. We knew Annalise was going to come out and swing hard. We saw them a little at HTC last Monday,” Knustrom said.
“Their middle played great, and I don’t know that we were quite ready for that. We hadn’t seen that since week 1 in Bondurant.
“I thought our defense played solid and played hard. It didn’t always look great, but we weren’t just letting balls drop. Things weren’t always going the way we wanted, but they were giving good effort.”
The Bloodhounds wrapped up conference action at 1-4 and now stand 4-16 overall.  The varsity is now off until Tuesday, Oct. 8 when they play opening pool play for the Southeast Conference Tournament in Keokuk.