LADY TIGERS SURPRISE NOTRE DAME

Baseball, Yogi Berra once declared, is 90 percent mental; the other half is physical.

Given the exploits of Cape Girardeau Central High and Notre Dame Tuesday night, the same could be said of volleyball.

While Notre Dame suffered slip-ups at inopportune junctures, Central exorcised some past mental ghosts and overcame the Lady Bulldogs in dramatic, anxious fashion, 15-12, 12-15, 16-14 at Notre Dame.

The victory, Central's first against the Lady Bulldogs in at least three seasons, advanced the Lady Tigers to 4-13-2, dropping Notre Dame to 11-10-2.

The Lady Tigers trailed 14-13 in the final game. But Amber Birk sandwiched a service ace between a hitting error and a passing mistake by Notre Dame, and Central prevailed after the Lady Bulldogs had frittered away five opportunities to cement a win.

Central coach April Morgan said the mental fortitude her team brought to view in the final points was absent in some previous matches. "It was the whole mental thing -- we'd get shaken at the end," she said.

"So in one of the timeouts I said, `Ladies, you can go out there and lie down for them and let them have it. Or you can go out with your heads held high knowing you did everything you could till the last point.' And that's what they decided to do. It just seemed like our team's mental game was a little better tonight," she said.

In turn, Notre Dame coach Janet Buchheit said her team's mental game was a little worse. One point from victory, the Lady Bulldogs made an error on a routine pass and missed two serves.

"When we miss two serves when we're on game point it makes it difficult for us to try to pull a game out," Buchheit said. "Just too many errors, and just not enough communication to pull us through the tough times.

"We're trying to come out of kind of a slump," she said. "Right now we just need to work on our confidence and work on taking care of the small mistakes that we make."

Central's Jessica Balogh, a senior, posted 10 kills and Katie Cozby and Ashley McElreath both added four kills. Cozby, a defensive specialist, also contributed five digs.

Erin Vickery and Kelly Canfield recorded 11 and 10 kills, respectively, for Notre Dame.