Looking to close out the first set of Thursday's match at Rackers Fieldhouse, the Helias Lady Crusaders got a momentum swing in their favor.
St. Francis Borgia closed the gap to two points before a service error, and Helias responded with an ace to get within two points of winning the set.
But then the Lady Crusaders committed their own service error, then a net violation, then gave up a kill to the Knights. Helias won the first set, 26-24, on a service error, but dropped the next three sets, 18-25, 7-25, 22-25 in a four-set loss.
Errors were a common theme all evening, including a Borgia run in the second set as a tie at 10 turned into a 17-10 lead in part because of three Lady Crusaders errors. And after a back-and-forth fourth set, the Knights closed out the match with three consecutive Helias errors.
"Just some mental errors at inconvenient times, like the end of the fourth set," Lady Crusaders coach David Harris said afterward. "Against good teams like that, you just can't do those kinds of things. We've got to be mentally tougher and make smarter decisions."
Borgia came out ahead in the matchup of two-loss Class 5 teams, dropping Helias to 22-3-2, with the losses coming against Willard, Hermann and the Knights, a trio of quality opponents.
Helias jumped out to a 3-0 lead in the first set and led wire-to-wire, with a healthy dose of contributions by Jacie Buschjost, Chapel Dobbs, Cate Albertson and Grace Wilding. Dobbs finished with a team-high nine kills and tied for the lead in blocks at three with Albertson, who also added six kills. Setter Landrey VanOverschelde had 19 assists and Ella Randolph had a team-high 12 digs.
Borgia made an adjustment and came back in the second set flying across the court on offense, setting firmly and quickly to both edges of the net. Helias' blockers had trouble rotating over in time, and the other four defenders were thrown off, too.
"I'd had two coaches tell me, and then I could see it even on video, they set super fast to the outside, both outsides, and even the middles, when they set the middles," Harris said. "That was really the fastest offense we've seen all year. If you haven't seen it before, it's hard to adjust. That's good for us, to see a really fast offense like that. Hopefully it'll help us down the road."
The Lady Crusaders had no answer in the third set, other than cheering to keep spirits high, and jumped out to a 3-1 lead to start the fourth set. Neither team got more than two points of separation until the end of the set, but the Knights used a quick run, starting with a Helias service error, to go from trailing 8-6 to leading 10-8.
The Lady Crusaders thought they had a back-of-the-hand dig into a quick kill to tie the set at 21, but after the referees conferred, it was ruled down. After a timeout, Helias got a kill and Borgia committed an error to tie the set at 22, but three straight errors killed of the comeback attempt.
"It showed some fight, it showed some determination, showed some mental toughness to come back and play better in that fourth set," Harris said. "We had opportunities to force a fifth set, but we couldn't quite close the deal."
The Lady Crusaders are back in action at 7:15 p.m. Monday at Rock Bridge in a Central Missouri Activities Conference match.
Helias won the JV match 25-12, 25-21 to improve to 9-1 this year. Tori Schmidt had nine digs, 14 assists, an ace and 14 service points for the Lady Crusaders, Summer Hake added nine kills and a block and Ava Millard had 16 digs and six service points.
Claire Mann and Faith Ann Meyer each had two blocks for Helias, Hannah Luetkemeyer had 11 service points and four digs, Stella Struttmann had four kills and four digs and Libby Gaines added four digs and three kills.
The Lady Crusaders won the freshman match 25-16, 25-17 to improve to 15-4-1. Adalyn Koelling had six kills, a block and an ace for Helias, Isabella Herrbold had nine digs and two aces and Addisyn Bryant had six assists, two kills, two aces and two digs. Kalyn Saucier added six digs, two aces and an assist, Elise Lauf registered three kills and two digs, and Madison Kempker had two kills, four assists and a dig.