Lady Horns Fall to Iola

Schulenburg’s magical volleyball season ended Wednesday night in a four-set state semifinal loss to Iola.

The Lady Horns (37-13) pushed Iola (which has an amazing 50-1 record this season) more than most teams had this season, but the Lady Bulldogs won 25-19, 25-20, 19-25, 25-22.

But in the loss Schulenburg’s Kieryn Adams set a new state tournament record (all conferences) with 41 individual digs in a single game.

The previous record was 39 digs by Morgan Wilson (Bushland) in 2010.

Despite Adams’ heroics, Iola advances to Friday’s Class 2A state title match against Crawford.

Schulenburg, meanwhile, ends their season as state bronze medalists for the second consecutive season.

But they didn’t go down without a fight.

Schulenburg came into the state semifinal as winners of 24 consecutive matches.

After losing the first two sets, the Lady Horns won the second set 2519 to become only the fourth team this season to take a set off of Iola.

Schulenburg then had a 10-8 lead in the fourth set but couldn’t hold on to force a fifth set.

Junior Emmrie Marx had a teamhigh 18 kills for Schulenburg.

Seniors Jessalyn Gipson and Meredith Magliolo each had 12 kills. Reagan Dusek had four, Brooke Redding two and Avery Helms one.

Landry Zapalac had 41 assists. Helms had 10 digs, Madison Kunschick had seven. Zapalac and Dusek each had five digs, Keaton Walker and Clara Magliolo had four digs each.

Iola was led by Lindsey Gooch who had 24 kills and 14 digs. It was feast for famine for Iola serving, they had 18 service aces but also 11 service errors (compared to no service errors for Schulenburg).

While the Lady Horns will be losing five key seniors (Adams, Walker, Redding, Gipson and Magliolo) they also return several strong players to try to make a run at a third trip to state next season.