This Logan County Volleyball machine rolled on in dominating 13th District action this week. Coach Caleb Sheffield’s Lady Cougars swept Russellville and Todd Central on the way to the school’s 18th straight district championship.
LCHS beat Russellville 25-9, 25-6, 25-11 in the opening round and then held off Todd Central 25-12, 25-16, 25-21 in the finals.
Now the Lady Cougars are preparing to play Barren County Tuesday in the regional tournament halfway across the state at Russell County.
District teams played each other only once during the shortened regular season this year rather than the traditional twice. As a result, the Lady Cougars’ five wins ran their records to 131 straight district-match wins. By not losing a set again, they made their winning streak in that statistical category 317 straight.
The Lady Cougars are 6-5 in the region. In addition to the five district wins, they beat Warren East 3-0. The losses came in three encounters with South Warren plus once each against Bowling Green and Greenwood, three of the region’s best teams. South Warren is coached by Lindsey Sheffield, the wife of Cougar coach Caleb Sheffield and a former Logan assistant. Against all three of those powers, a match ended with a 25-23 loss in the final set. Logan won a set against the Lady Spartans, and in one game in each of the other two matches South had to go into overtime in one of the sets to win.
Even though the 2020 Logan team relied heavily on seniors Katie Fitzgerald, Nevaeh DeArmond, Embry Burgess and Zoe Steenbergen, it also had three eighth graders—Lindy Mitchell, Lydia Owens and Aubrey Sears, two freshmen—Whitney Christian and Sloan Coursey, and four sophomores—Rachel Dezarn, Caroline Kelley, Summer Price and Haleigh Wood—making up over half of its roster. The two juniors are Katie Baer and Kallie Jo Carpenter.
“Congratulations to Zoe Steenbergen, Summer Price, Embry Burgess, and Rachel Dezarn on being named to the 13th District All-Season Team,” said Athletic Director Greg Howard.
The Lady Cougars play Barren County in the opening match of the lower bracket at region. That’s scheduled Tuesday at 5:30. Also in their bracket are two of the three teams with the region’s top records, Clinton County and Bowling Green.
An opening night win would have Logan playing in Thursday’s semifinals at 8 p.m. Thursday. The finals are scheduled Friday at 6 p.m.
13th District runner-up Todd Central will play regional favorite Greenwood Monday at 5:30.