Lady Mustangs fall to Kitty Kats in four sets

The Nixon-Smiley hosted the Yorktown Kitty Kats for a non-district match Tuesday, Sept. 17.

The Lady Mustangs fell to Yorktown in four sets (15-25, 27-25, 14-25, 19-25).

Nixon-Smiley lost in sets one, three and four, but denied the Kitty Kats a sweep with a close battle in set two.

Lady Mustangs head volleyball coach Loraine Yates was impressed with how her team performed in the second set against Yorktown.

"I thought that the second set, we really came out. We hustled. We were hitting the floor. We got some balls that I honestly sometimes didn't think we were going to get up. I thought the effort in that set was a lot better than what we had seen. We just got to work on some of the adjustments on defense, the tip adjustments, the push adjustments, and then we'll get there," Yates said.

The Lady Mustangs have two more non-district matches against former district opponent Marion (Friday, Sept. 20) and Runge (Tuesday, Sept. 24) before their district opener against rival Stockdale Friday, Sept. 27.

"We're excited to go and travel and play them [Marion], since it's the only time we're going to see them this season, we remember a few of the returners that they have coming out this year, but they have a pretty new squad as well. They lost a lot of seniors, so I'm curious to see what all they bring. I hope it's a good, competitive game leading up into district next week," Yates said.

The Lady Mustangs will close out non-district against Runge at home.

"We'll have to definitely kind of buckle down on some of the out of system plays and things that Runge brings we face them already, and they do traditional bump-set attack, so we're going to just have to make sure that we're prepared for that, but glad to be ending preseason at home and then move on to Stockton on [next] Friday," Yates said.

The Marion game starts at 7 p.m.