St. Joseph’s tops HLB in playoff opener

• By ROBIN FAMBROUGH
• Advocate sportswriter
• Published: Nov 8, 2009

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H.L. Bourgeois pulled off a mild upset, ousting No. 16 seed New Iberia to open the Louisiana High School Athletic Association’s volleyball playoffs.

There was no upset in the cards for the 17th-seeded Braves on Saturday.

Top-seeded St. Joseph’s Academy came away with a 3-0 victory in the Division I-Class 5A regional-round contest played at SJA.

“H.L. Bourgeois had a great season,” SJA coach Sivi Miller said. “They played extremely hard and they pushed us.

“We made too many errors … Things we’ll need to correct. But this was a good one to

have before the state tournament.”

With the victory, two-time defending Division I state champion SJA (43-1) advances to the LHSAA State Volleyball Tournament that begins Thursday in Kenner at the Pontchartrain Center. The Redstickers, who had a bidistrict-round bye, won by scores of 25-15, 25-19 and 25-23.

Hitters Cori Martone and Caroline May paced St. Joseph’s with 14 and 13 kills, respectively.

Lindsey Fourroux (18 assists), Ashley Legendre (14 assists) and Kristen Armstrong (13 digs) were other Redstickers leaders.

Tashanna Westley led H.L. Bourgeois with 14 kills and six solo blocks.

Olivia Jobson (32 assists), Brooke Porche (9 kills) and Jade Verret (9 digs) were other leaders for the Houma-area team.

“After losing six seniors last year, this team worked extremely hard starting last spring,” HLB coach Peter Verret said. “We had a good win at New Iberia.

“People like to talk about this being a scrappy team. Today they never gave up. And if we had been able to cut down on our errors, especially our serving errors, we could have taken it to another game. They (the Redstickers) are very good.”