Tigers upend Knights to arrange showdown with Jackson

The opportunistic Tigers pounced on Farmington's mistakes in Monday's Class 4 District 1 volleyball semifinal.

Central repeatedly made the Knights pay for long hits or shots into the net by grabbing a couple more points after the errors. The No. 3 seed Tigers rode those streaks to a 27-25, 29-27 upset of No. 2 seed Farmington at Jackson High School. They will face Jackson at 6 p.m. Wednesday for the district title.

"We've got to make them pay for getting points on us," Central junior Chelsey Brown said. "It's all about recovering, and that's what we did."

Central used a pair of errors to grab an early 10-5 lead in the opening game, but Farmington battled back to even the match at 20-20. The Knights even pulled ahead 22-20, but the Tigers refused to wilt.

"I think at the beginning of the year we would have felt nervous and pressured and choked a little," Central senior Charis Stewart said. "But we've gotten a lot better about fighting our way back and we do a lot of drills in practice where we're down by a few game points."

There was no choking Monday.

Brown ended the first game when she slammed a kill deep to lift her team to victory. She finished with a team-high 11 kills.

"I hit it as hard as I can and I happened to find some holes," Brown said.

It was Central's back-row defense that proved the difference in the second game. Central (11-20-2) jumped out to an 8-4 lead, thanks in part to the back row. The Tigers did an outstanding job of digging most of the Knights' hard shots. The Central blockers weren't getting a piece of the hard hits, but the diggers didn't allow the shots to hit the floor.

"You've got to watch the arm all the time," Central senior Meg Goodman said. "For a lot of us, this is it. We're seniors and this could be it. Every ball that comes over you want to get up."

Central coach Charity Huff was pleased to see her team respond to something it worked hard on in practice over the last week.

"We spent a lot of time this last week working with our back row on that, reading hitters, reading shoulders and making the lines and making the cross courts," Huff said. "I really think practice this week really helped as far as focusing on our back-row defense. The girls did a really good job on staying focused on reading that."

Jade Sander finished with eight digs, while Chelsea Pannier had five and Brown four.

Farmington finally capitalized on some Central errors to close the gap in the second game. Three straight errors helped Farmington pull even at 17-17, then two consecutive receiving errors allowed Farmington to pull ahead 21-20.

But again, Central didn't back down.

"We never got down on ourselves," Brown said. "In the beginning of the season, we always got down on ourselves. Now we bring each other up."

It was mistakes late that doomed Farmington. The Knights had game point at 25-24, but they hit into the net. With the score tied 26-26, the Knights hit long to give the Tigers game point. Stewart didn't waste the chance. She ended the match with an ace.

"I looked at the coaches for a target and they told me what target to serve," she said. "I kind of saw a hole so I aimed for that."

Stewart's hard hitting provided a boost for the Tigers. She finished with seven kills.

"We worked in practice hitting to the other team's blockers' weak side," Stewart said. "So I was cutting to where I thought was their weak side."

Central earned a spot in the semifinals by defeating Sikeston 25-21, 25-19 earlier Monday.

Central now gets a shot at top-seeded Jackson, its rival.

"We beat Jackson last year in districts, so we have that motivation," Stewart said. "We want to keep the season going as long as we can."