The junior high school volleyball season came to a close Saturday morning with the Class 3A West volleyball junior district tournament. The tournament was hosted by Paris High School. The Paris junior Lady Eagles volleyball team defended its regular season and district tournament championships with a 2-0 victory over Mansfield. Paris is now the 2019 junior district tournament champions, and Mansfield, who finished runner-up to Paris in the regular season, also finished as district tournament runner-ups.
Both teams powered their ways through the tournament without losing a set going into the championship match. Mansfield was pushed by Charleston in the semi-finals as they defeated Charleston 2-0 in two highly competitive sets.
Paris defeated West Fork, who surprised Booneville in the quarterfinals, by a score of 2-0. The Lady Eagles were never challenged in the tournament until the finals against Mansfield.
On a day that marked the end of the junior high playing careers of ninth grade players, the futures are bright for both Mansfield and Paris. In fact, both schools will likely move up freshmen to their varsity teams in advance of next week’s senior high district tournament in West Fork.
For Mansfield’s senior high team, they have been steadily improving throughout the season. With the addition of talented freshmen from the district runner-up team, Mansfield could become a very tough opponent next week.
Paris has incredible, quality depth on its varsity roster. Any movement of freshmen to the varsity for the district and state playoffs will just make Paris that much more formidable in the post season.
As they say, a picture says a thousand words. So, here are pictures from yesterday’s finals! Congratulations to both Paris and Mansfield!
