George Jenkins Falls Short of Final Four Goal

Sun. November 13, 2011 at 1:55 a.m. | By Polk Preps Staff

By Mike Akins | Ledger Correspondent

KISSIMMEE | George Jenkins' attempt to go to the final four for the first time since 1995 was stopped short by Harmony 25-18, 25-21, 22-25, 25-23 in the Class 5A regional final on Saturday afternoon.

Harmony (22-5) advances to the state semifinals for the first time in school history. The Longhorns will play on Friday afternoon at the Silver Spurs Arena. The Eagles (27-4) last advanced to the regional final in 2001 where they lost to Tampa Plant.

After playing a near perfect regional semifinal against Lakeland, the Eagles came out of the gates slow against Harmony. They jumped out to a 17-10 lead in the second game, though, before sputtering again.

"We started to commit mental errors and it just snowballed from there," Eagles' coach Lisa Bickerton said. 

"In the last game all the girls communicated well, played as well as they could as a team and they all gave 100 percent, for whatever reason, we did not have that in this game."

The Longhorns rallied off 10 points behind kills by Alicia Palm and Nia Frederick in that second game. Each had three kills in the run; Genesis Viera finished the game off with a kill.

The Eagles won the third game by doing a good job of finding the open court due more to precision shots. Erin Wiebert had nine service points and Kayla Monsanto and Kacy Scarpa each had six kills in that set.

"The Eagles switched things around in that third game offensively and that threw us off a little," Longhorn coach Eric Trowbridge said.

"I knew coming into the match that George Jenkins did a great job of keeping the ball in play, so we had to adjust accordingly."

In the fourth, Jenkins jumped out to a 16-10 lead before Marie Gilbert had seven straight service points. 

The Eagles held onto the lead until Harmony scored the last five points. 

Jessie Scarpa led the Eagles with 11 digs and nine kills and Wibert added six kills. Gilbert led the home team with 11 kills while Viera dished out 33 assists.