From Staff Reports

GARLAND – The Liberty Hill Lady Panthers made history on Friday and will get a chance to become legendary.

The Lady Panthers defeated defending state champion Colleyville Heritage 3-1 (25-20, 23-25, 25-23, 25-21) in a Class 5A semifinal at the Curtis Culwell Center in Garland to advance to the state championship match for the first time in school history.

Liberty Hill (41-10) will face Lucas Lovejoy (33-10) in Saturday’s Class 5A championship match scheduled for 3 p.m.

Lovejoy will be no easy feat for the Lady Panthers. The Leopards have won three of the last four Class 5A state championships and have made 13 appearances at the University Interscholastic League state volleyball tournament.

However, Friday wasn’t supposed to be easy either. In fact, Liberty Hill went into Friday’s match with Colleyville Heritage as the underdog and with a 0-4 record in state semifinal games.

if Liberty Hill was truly the underdog Friday, they sure didn’t play like it.

The Lady Panthers protected the net about as well as one team could. Heritage finished with a team hitting percentage of .101, with 34 attacking errors. Part of that was, in part, due to Liberty Hill’s net defense. Juniors Evie Bruce and Ava Kostroun combined for 15 blocks. Kostroun had 11 of them.

While the defensive front was doing their business, the Lady Panthers’ offense came in swinging at every angle and had three players finish with double digit kills, including junior Annie Witt ‘s team-high 12 kills. Seniors GiGi Mason and Kealy Dirner each had 10 kills.

junior Taylor Gaines. finished the game with nine kills, which included the biggest one of the match that sealed the victory in the fourth set. Gaines also had the set-winning kill in the first set.

Box Score

Liberty Hill 3, Colleyville Heritage 1

Liberty hill 3, colleyville heritage 1	1	2	3	4
Liberty Hill	25	23	25	25
Colleyville Heritage	20	25	23	21