Bourbon High School’s volleyball team dropped a pair of matches to Belle and Kingston and are 3-3-1 on the season, as of the morning of Sept. 4. The Lady Warhawks played in Viburnum the evening of Sept. 4, which will be detailed in next week’s edition due to the Labor Day print schedule deadlines.

The Lady Warhawks hosted its Route 66 neighbor and Gasconade Valley Conference (GVC) opponent, Cuba, on Sept. 8, which will also be detailed in next week’s edition. Bourbon will then play road matches Sept. 10 in St. James and Sept. 15 in Valley.

9/1 vs. Belle

The Lady Warhawks began its September slate of games by traveling to Belle to take on its Gasconade Valley Conference foe, the Belle Lady Tigers. The two teams know each other well after three battles last season. After falling to the Lady Tigers twice in the regular season last year, Bourbon got its revenge in the Class 2 District 6 quarterfinals, sweeping the Lady Tigers 3-0 to end their season.

In its newest chapter of the rivalry, Belle got the best of Bourbon, winning 25-20, 25-21 and 25-13 in straight sets to give the Lady Warhawks their second loss of the season. Belle’s victory was its first of the year after falling to Licking in its season opener.

Junior captain Lauryn Hercules had a strong all-around game for the Lady Warhawks, tallying 13 serves received, seven kills, four digs and one assist. Senior Hallie Kahmke registered 12 serves received, five digs, three kills, one assist and one ace and fellow senior Maddie Blanton had a team-high five aces.

Senior captain Allie Sutton led Bourbon with 15 assists as its primary setter and also chipped in four digs and three aces. Senior Payton Helton received five serves and had five digs, junior Kenzii Withorn had seven digs and five kills, and junior Hayden Terry added three kills, two aces and one dig. Senior Lydia Jones paced the Lady Tigers with 13 kills and junior Zoe Camden had a game-high 18 assists in the winning effort.

Bourbon’s junior varsity team earned a victory over Belle’s junior varsity team in the first matchup of the evening between the two GVC opponents. Despite falling 25-16 in the first set, the Lady Warhawks bounced back to win the second set 25-15 and the third set 15-11 to earn the win.    

9/3 vs. Kingston

Bourbon hosted the Kingston Lady Cougars at home two days later. The Lady Warhawks’ junior varsity team played first and won in straight sets, 25-5, 25-22 and 15-6 for its third victory of the season in as many matches.

Bourbon’s varsity team was in for a tougher competition. The Lady Warhawks won the first set 25-20, but lost the second and third sets 25-22 and 25-18 to go down two sets to one in the best of five series.

Bourbon didn’t go down without a fight, winning the fourth set 25-22 to send the match to a fifth and final tie-breaking set. However, Kingston regained momentum, taking the fifth set 15-6 to give the Lady Hawks its third loss of the season. Statistics for this match were not available at the time the article was written.