By Staff
Justin Schuver, Hartselle Enquirer
Hartselle finished second at the Brewer/Pepsi Invitational Tournament for the second straight year, falling to Addison 25-14, 25-13 in the championship match Saturday evening at Brewer High School.
With fewer than 130 students in its enrollment, Addison was one of the smaller schools represented at the 16-team tournament. But the Bulldogs are not your typical small-school program – Addison won three straight Class 1A titles from 2003-05 and finished second to Bayside Academy in the Class 2A championship in 2006.
"Addison is a very good team, there's absolutely no shame in losing to them," Hartselle coach Tanya Lybarger said.
In Game 1 of the final match, Hartselle (4-4) took an initial 8-3 lead before Addison stormed back with a 12-0 run to move in front for good. Hartselle fell behind 8-2 early in Game 2 and never got closer than six points the rest of the way.
"I think mentally we got down and things just started to snowball from there," Lybarger said. "We'd make a good pass, but then we'd mess up the hit. Or we'd have a good hit and then we'd fail with our block. It wasn't just one thing we were doing wrong."
In the semifinals, Addison defeated Good Hope 25-16, 25-6, while Hartselle faced a familiar foe in host school Brewer. The Lady Tigers won the first game 25-9 and completed the sweep with a 25-20 victory in Game 2.
In quarterfinal play, Hartselle defeated Madison Academy 25-23, 25-21. The Lady Tigers were behind 22-21 in Game 1 but managed to come back for a victory.
In the other quarterfinal, Brewer defeated Grissom's junior varsity 20-25, 25-22, 15-12.
Brewer fell behind quickly in each of the first two games of the match, trailing 11-3 in Game 1 and 7-0 early in Game 2. But the Lady Patriots battled back to win the second game and continued their momentum into the tiebreaker. Brewer went ahead 4-3 early in Game 3 and never trailed the rest of the way, knocking out the 2006 tournament champion.
In its pool play games, Hartselle defeated Fairview 25-17, 25-10; defeated Buckhorn 25-17, 25-18; and lost to Good Hope 18-25, 22-25. Brewer defeated Catholic-Huntsville 26-24, 20-25, 15-9; defeated Lee 25-14, 25-19; and defeated St. Bernard 25-12, 25-17. Danville was also a participant in the tournament, although the Lady Hawks did not advance to the single elimination level.
Leading the way for Hartselle at the tournament included Chandler Orr, who had a team-high 35 kills. Dana Lacey and Corey Livingston each added 17 kills and Alex Holmes had 11. Lacey also led the team with six aces and eight blocks while Shauna Clemons had a team-high 21 digs. Cerra Little finished with 72 assists.
Also Saturday, the Hartselle JV team finished first at the Danville JV Tournament. The team's coach is Michelle Kelso.