Witherspoon powers Lafayette into Class 5 championship match; St. Dominic falls in five sets

Outside hitter Maya Witherspoon capped a strong performance Thursday with a match-ending ace to lift Lafayette to a 25-11, 25-17, 23-25, 25-22 win over Liberty North in the Class 5 girls volleyball state semifinal at Southeast Missouri State University's Show Me Center.

“I definitely started getting more comfortable, the nerves definitely just settled after the first set and then it was just go time from there,” Witherspoon said.

Lafayette (31-6), No. 1 in the STLhighschoolsports.com large school rankings, will play Kickapoo (31-8) in the championship match at 10 a.m. Friday. The Lancers, in their first state final since 2019, are seeking their seventh state championship but first since 2016.

Kickapoo beat St. Dominic 17-25, 22-25, 25-17, 23-25, 10-15 in the other semifinal.

Witherspoon put down a match-high 21 kills for the Lancers. Caitlyn Little had 13 kills, Allison Risley had eight and a team-high 18 digs and Layne Witherspoon had seven kills.

Setter Alyssa Nelson racked up 51 assists while running the Lafayette offense.

“She really makes us go,” Lafayette coach Zach Young said of Nelson. “She's one of those setters you just get every once in a while through your program and you just got to enjoy it.”

Carlie Cisneros had 20 kills and Lauren Wright and Emma Christian combined for 39 assists for North (30-6).

Lafayette took control of the opener with an 8-0 run. Little set the tone from the start with several big swings and Mia Moser added an ace as the Lancers jumped out to an 11-4 lead.

Layne Witherspoon had consecutive blocks to preserve the cushion, Maya Witherspoon added a pair of kills and blocks from Maya Witherspoon and Anna Kraemer helped seal the set.

“Cait played in unreal first set,” Young said of Little. “And Liberty North is smart, they’ve got a good coaching staff and they switched some blockers that were a little bit better on her and the nice thing about our team is we are truly a team to where it doesn't have to be one person.”

In stepped Maya Witherspoon.

Kills by Maya Witherspoon and Little helped Lafayette dig out of an early hole in the second set. Layne Witherspoon, Maya Witherspoon and Jayden Wiese all had big swings during a late spurt and an Ellie Emms spike gave the Lancers a 2-0 lead.

“They switched their lineup to have their best blocker on (Little) so I tried to spread it out a little bit more and then that happened to be Maya,” Nelson said. “And it was just great because they were both just killing it.”

Lafayette chipped away at an early 15-10 deficit in the third set but fell short as late kills from Cisneros and Nela Misipeka for North sent the match to a fourth set.

Maya Witherspoon took over during the stretch run of a tense fourth set. Her tip gave Lafayette a 22-20 lead and she put down a kill to snap a 22-all tie.

“I'm so proud of her and when she plays like that she's tough to stop,” Young said. “She's just a great kid and I was excited that she had a had a good match in a big match.”

Maya Witherspoon then stepped to the service line, and after a North net violation brought up match point, she unleashed her best serve of the afternoon, which fell for an ace to end the 1-hour, 52-minute contest.

“It was just a confidence thing,” Maya Witherspoon said. “I knew I couldn't go back to the service line and be scared. I had to be confident in what I was doing.”

It’s a mindset preached by the Lafayette coaching staff.

“We give our kids the freedom to play aggressively,” Young said. “So, she knows in that instance if she buried in the net or hit it out, we're just going to move on to the next point. But we want our kids to be aggressive.”

St. Dominic falls short of first state final

The Crusaders couldn’t close out a determined Chiefs squad in the other Class 5 semifinal.

St. Dominic (25-12-3), No. 8 in the small schools rankings, fought off three match points before Kickapoo ended the 2 hour, 4-minute match.

“The fourth set, we just did not come out strong,” St. Dominic coach Courtney Bland said. “We just didn't have a rhythm. It was just one of those days where nothing felt like it was in a good rhythm, which we've had. So yeah, we didn't we didn't play our best volleyball, but they played really hard.”

The Crusaders, who later fell 16-25, 25-16, 25-18, 25-18 to Liberty North in the third-palce match, were beaten in the semifinal round for the third consecutive season but weren't shut out for the first time. Their third place finishes last year and in Class 3 in 2008 are the program's best finishes.

Mikayla Robertson had 17 kills and Anna Kohmetscher added 12 more for St. Dominic. Mary Kate Mulvaney had 39 assists.

Isabella Faria had 16 kills for Kickapoo, while Reagan Greenway and Hannah Gardner combined for 37 assists.