HUMBOLDT — A little trust — and more than a little persistence from a star senior — paid off for Iola High’s volleyball team Saturday.
The Mustangs were at Humboldt for the Lady Cubs’ preseason tournament, the first matches of the year for IHS.
And as fate would have it, senior standout Reese Curry was hobbled by an injury in practice Friday.
Head coach Amanda Holman entered Saturday intent on limiting Curry’s time on the court.
“This being our first action of the season, we have goals, and one of them is preserving the athlete,” Holman explained afterward.
But after tough, three-set losses to open the day to Rossville and Prairie View, and a steady diet of assurances from Curry that she was fully healthy, Holman relented.
“The time came that I had to trust she was as OK as she said she was,” Holman chuckled.
She moved Curry to the front lines for the final two matches of the day.
The trust paid off handsomely. Curry took on a starring role as Iola ended the day with a straight-set win over Burlington and a three-set victory over Humboldt, 25-17, 20-25 and 25-23.
“She did everything right,” Holman said.
With Curry on the back row, Holman adjusted the lineup in other ways. Classmate Elza Clift started the day as the team’s libero, but changed positions to the outside midway throught the first match to give the team some added flexibility.
“We threw some things at them, and they adjusted,” Holman said.
In other action, the host Lady Cubs rolled to a straight-set win over Waverly to open the day, but it ended on a sour note, with three consecutive three-set losses to wrap up the afternoon.
Rossville defeats Iola, 25-23, 25-27 and 25-16
In each of the first two sets, both teams traded wild scoring runs. Rossville took advantage of crucial a Mustang error — a miscommunication as to who would set up a potential kill shot allowed the ball to flutter the court without anybody hitting it — before serving out the match to win.
