By John Rittenhouse
On a night the Luverne volleyball team had to play its best match of the season, it did not.
The seventh-seeded Cardinals were huge underdogs during Friday's quarterfinal-round match of the South Section 2AA Volleyball Tournament going into a tilt with No. 2 Jackson County Central.
They entered the match knowing they had to play their best game of the season in order to advance, but it wasn’t in the cards for LHS.
Luverne did battle with the Huskies for more than one hour, but it wasn't enough to extend what finished as a 12-16-1 campaign with a 3-0 loss to JCC.
"The final score is not indicative of how well we played in the match," said LHS coach Mary Jo Graphenteen. "With the exception of the first game, we played pretty well. We didn't have our best serving, hitting or receiving matches of the year, but we hung right in there with a good JCC team. That tells you how hard we competed."
The Cardinals didn't lose the match for a lack of effort. In fact, there were times in Games 2 and 3 Luverne looked to be the better team. In the end, JCC proved it was the better club by putting together extended runs in all three games.
Cardinal Emily Oksness served a point to tie Game 1 at one point each, and LHS trailed 3-2 after an ace tip from Brittney Williams.
Luverne, however, was limited to one ace serve from Oksness the rest of the game as the Huskies went on a 12-1 run to ice a 15-3 win.
Game 2 was Luverne's for the taking, but the Cards couldn't put the game away.
The score was tied at four when Oksness served an eight-point run featuring three aces and one kill and one block from Stephanie Morgan to give the Cardinals a 12-4 lead.
The score was 14-6 after Williams and Morgan delivered service points as the game progressed, but JCC bounced back to score the next 10 points while stealing a 16-14 win.
"It seemed like every player we had on the court had a chance to get the 15th point for us in Game 2, but we just were unable to get it," Graphenteen said.
Trailing 2-1 in Game 3, Luverne used ace serves from Cassie Pap, Tera Boomgaarden and Oksness and a block from Morgan while putting together a 6-3 surge that ended with the Cards sporting a 7-5 lead.
As they did all night, JCC met the challenge by scoring the next 10 points to cap a 15-7 victory.
Oksness, a senior playing her last match for LHS, completed 16 of 18 serves. She had 15 points and five aces. Rashel Boeve, who had nine kills, and Casey Kleinjan, who received limited action coming off the bench, also capped their LHS careers.
Morgan led Luverne with 11 kills.
Callen Bosshart and Taylor Nelson drew praise from their coach for making contributions while coming off the bench.