The Humble ISD school year is still a couple of weeks away from starting, and football is just around the corner, but the volleyball action is already heating up. This past week, three of the area’s volleyball teams, Kingwood, Kingwood Park and Summer Creek participated in the annual John Turner Classic in Pearland.
The Classic is known as the nation’s largest volleyball tournament, with 88 teams.
Not only that, as Texas Volleyball Coaches Association Executive Director John Turner pointed out in an interview with Todd James of Locker Talk Radio, seven of the eight finalists from 5A and 6A participated in this year’s tournament.
In particular, the Kingwood Mustangs and Kingwood Park Panthers volleyball teams had strong showings.
In their first round of divisional pool play, both the Mustangs and Panthers won two of their three matchups.
In District 5, the Panthers won their two games easily over Jenks and Brazoswood before falling in a close one to Brazoswood. In District 12, meanwhile, the Mustangs swept Beaumont Westbrook, nipped SA Johnson and fell to Prosper in three sets.
That set up a showdown between the Panthers and Mustangs in a Gold Challenge play-in game.
In a tight match throughout, the Mustangs took the first set, 25-20, before the Panthers came up clutch in the last two sets. Park won the last two sets 25-21 and 26-24 to advance to the Gold Bracket and sending Kingwood to the Silver Bracket.
From there, the Panthers would play tough in the Gold Bracket, falling to The Woodlands, San Antonio O’Connor and Colleyville Heritage while beating Westlake.
In the Silver Bracket, meanwhile, the Mustangs also battled hard, beating Santa Fe and losing to Grapevine and Clear Falls in tough three-set matches.
The Summer Creek Bulldogs, meanwhile, had a tough time early in the tournament before collecting some wins late.
The Bulldogs lost all three of their Division Six matches to Clear Falls, Allen and Barbers Hill.
But once they got into their Challenge Flight pool and their Flight Bracket, they responded by winning three of their final five matches, against Second Baptist, LaPorte and St. John’s.
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