Last week the Spartan team traveled to Manti and defeated the host team in four sets. It appears that Gunnison and Manti are the two teams from the region that will not continue their season on into the playoffs. Region 15 will match up next week with region 16 and it appears that North Summit will win that region followed by South Summit, Maeser Prep and American Leadership. After having split their final two regular season matches last week against Gunnison and San Juan, the Emery High Lady Spartan volleyball is preparing this week to travel to the 2-A Utah State tournament at Utah Valley University in Orem for the playoffs. Emery defeated Gunnison 3-1 and then lost to San Juan in five, 3-2.
Emery finished region action with the third place seeding out of the region and will play this Friday afternoon and evening. Emery’s opening match will be against the South Summit/Maeser Prep tiebreaker winner and will start at 4 pm on court 4. Succeeding games will depend on the outcome of previous games.
The Emery-Gunnison scores were 24-26, 25-18, 25-21 and 25-19. In the first game, Emery led 15-4 before Gunnison rallied to take the game. The two teams were tied in the second game 14-14 when the Spartans ran away from their opponent the rest of the night and won the match.
Emery and San Juan battled evenly throughout the night before San Juan won the final game 15-13 to edge the visiting team. The scores last Thursday night were 22-25, 25-23, 20-25, 26-24 and 13-15.
In 2012, Emery did not make the state tournament followed by finishing seventh in 2013. Last season Emery finished sixth after losing the first match to Enterprise, the eventual state champion and then winning three in a row to claim the sixth spot. The Lady Spartans would like to continue their rise in the rankings and would like to do well in this tournament.
Emery is a senior dominated team with six seniors seeing major playing time. Those seniors are Camrey Johnson #2, Jessica Mason #3, Bayler Griffin #6, Jessica Olsen #14, Skyler Sitterud #21 and Aniston Curtis #24. Although the team had no juniors on it, the team played two sophomores and two freshmen throughout the season and those underclassmen continued to improve and help the team. Morgann Donaldson#10 and Abbie Huntington #20 were the sophomores and Bailey Huggard #13 and Megan Jensen #22 were the freshmen.
Good luck Emery this week at State, play well.
Lady Spartan Volleyball ready to enter state tourney
"Coach Kris Bell, Jessica Olsen, Aniston Curtis, Jessica Mason, Bayler Griffin, Skyler Sitterud, Camrey Johnson, Coaches Jen Jewkes and Shanae Buttler. Senior night for the volleyball team."