On Wednesday, Neosho volleyball traveled to Kansas City, Kansas to play Kansas City Kansas Community College in their first Jayhawk Conference match of the season. The Panthers suffered a five set loss despite coming out on top early in the match. (25-23, 25-12, 19-25, 20-25, 11-15) Neosho took an early 2-0 set lead in the match by closing out a back and forth first set and then jumping out to a big lead and never looking back in the second set.  

    The Panthers won the second set by a large margin due in large part to the number of errors committed on KCK's side of the net. KCK finished the second set with a -.143 hitting percentage. They only earned 2 kills and committed 6 errors, meanwhile Neosho had 6 errors also, but earned 11 kills.
     Starting the third set the roles were reversed and Neosho was the team committing the errors. KCK jumped out to a 6-1 lead in the third set. All six of KCK's points came off of errors by Neosho. The Panthers fought their way back into the third set, but couldn't quite close it out losing 19-25. After the third set loss the Panthers couldn't seem to get back on track losing the fourth set 20-25 and the fifth set 11-15.

     Neosho had several hitters that contributed throughout the match, but Sophomores Mackenzie Brown and Jill Starling led the pack with 9 kills followed by 8 kills from Freshman Sabrina Ebarb. Defensively the Panthers were led by Freshman Riley McGinn with 6 Blocks and Freshman Taryn Strobel with 25 digs.

    Neosho will take on Friends University on Saturday, August 29 at 1:00pm and 3:00pm in Wichita, where they will look to bounce back from their loss.