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Parkway West Closes Out Regular Season With Straight Set Win Over Parkway South

Suburban South champ Longhorns head to districts with 19-10 mark, while Patriots fall to 7-22-1.

PARKWAY WEST HIGH SCHOOL – After officially claiming their first Suburban South Conference girls volleyball championship since 2007, with a thrilling win over Webster Groves on Wednesday, the  team was back in action Thursday, with what was supposed to be a “victory lap” match of sorts against rival program Parkway South.

West came into the night with an 18-10 record, while South was struggling at 7-21 this season, setting up what seemed like the type of matchup that would allow the Longhorns to celebrate their winning season all over again, by easily taking out a young Patriots club.

But things didn’t exactly play out in that fashion, as South battled West much harder than most expected, and made the Longhorns earn everything they got in an eventual two sets to none win for the home club.

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“I don’t know if I want to say (how I feel) about the way we played tonight,” West head coach Susan Dean said. “We played well at times, but we were way too inconsistent. We made a lot of errors. It’s always good to get a win though.”

Officially, West won by scores of 25-12 and 25-19, but up until a final burst at the end of the second set, the Longhorns had more than a little trouble putting the plucky Patriots away.

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“It’s frustrating sometimes,” South head coach Carrie Steele, who had to fight back the tears after suffering another emotional loss in what has been very emotional season for the Patriots, said. “You can see the potential these girls have. And it’s just frustrating that we don’t get better results than we have.”

A big reason for that on Thursday, was West’s terrific defensive play, led by seniors Maddie Reale, Sara Hunt, and Rachel Alizadeh.

The trio has combined for more than 1,000 defensive digs this season, and on Thursday, they refused to let points die, and forced South to work hard to win any points.

Hunt and Reale were both big parts of the Longhorn offense too, with each player finishing with an unofficial total of nine kills in the match.

“We didn’t do as good a job as we could,” Dean said. “But we’ve got a good group of girls that work really hard.”

In the first set, West, despite some sloppiness, managed to put away South pretty quickly.

The second set though, was where South seemed to find its footing.

The Patriots grabbed the lead early on, and even led by as much as 16-12 midway through the set, but the newly-crowned Suburban South champs rallied back by winning 13 of the final 16 points to claim the set and match victory.

West is now 19-10 on the season, and found out earlier this week that it had received the No. 2 seed for next week’s Class 4 District 7 tournament.

The Longhorns, who will serve as tournament hosts next week, are in the same district as Parkway North, Parkway Central, Marquette, Pattonville, and No. 1 overall seed Francis Howell North.

Parkway North and Parkway Central will meet in one first-round matchup, while Marquette and Pattonville will square off in another, as Howell North and Parkway West both received byes to the tourney semifinals.

West will draw the Marquette/Pattonville winner next Wednesday at 6 p.m., with the winner of that matchup advancing to the championship game, which will follow immediately after at 7:30 p.m.

“We thought we might get that No. 1 seed, but we got the No. 2,” Dean said. “And we’re okay with that. Howell North’s got a really nice team, and Marquette’s (pretty good) as well. So we’re going to have ourselves a challenge no matter who we face in our district.”

Parkway South is in Class 4 District 4, where it earned the No. 7 seed, and will face No. 2 seed Rockwood Summit in the first round on Tuesday at 6 p.m.

South will also serve as its district’s host school, with the semifinals and championship scheduled for next Thursday.  

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