Head coach Tiffany Parker’s team came up against BLHS on the brink of elimination for the third consecutive season on Saturday afternoon, but she hasn’t broke the code to defeating the team’s nearby rival.

The Chieftains never got going in the sub-state matchup, ending their season in straight sets, 25-17, 25-12.

“Any loss in sub-state is hard, regardless of who it is,” Parker said. “They’re our six-mile-away rival, but it doesn’t matter who is on the other side.”

Tonganoxie (16-21) opened up strong and got it to 6-6 to open the first set with an early back-and-forth, but Basehor-Linwood (23-15), the No. 2 seed in the tournament, took no more time asserting its dominance. It was soon 16-10 before Tonganoxie got it to 16-13 and BLHS took a timeout. The Bobcats rode a 9-4 wave to the finish line and took the first set, 25-17.

The Bobcats didn’t relent in the second set. BLHS jumped to an 8-3 lead before BLHS junior Courtney Norris came to the service stripe, tallying three aces and six points in all to make it 14-3 before the Chieftains got on the board again. The Chieftains went on a 4-0 run to make it 14-7, but BLHS countered with seven points of its own to make it 21-7.

Tonganoxie stayed competitive until the end, going on a 5-4 run to close the match, but it simply wasn’t enough. The Chieftains fell to the Bobcats for the second time this season, and were eliminated from postseason play by BLHS for the third consecutive year.

“I was proud of they way that they came out and they competed in this match,” Parker said after the loss. “Basehor beat us pretty badly earlier in the season, and it would have been really easy for us to just come out and let them put it to us. But we came out and we fought.”

The team was eliminated from postseason play with the loss, but Parker will return her core group next year. Only two seniors on this Chieftains team will graduate — Summer Cerny and Jessica Minear — and only one of those two was in the starting lineup on Saturday. There’s a reason to believe the team will be right back in sub-state play in 2015.

“We were really young,” Parker said. “We’ve got a lot of kids that are coming back that are passionate about getting batter in their time away from the school team… That’s exciting. They’re only going to get better.”

BLHS later lost to tournament host and No. 1 seed De Soto in straight sets in the sub-state finals. The Wildcats will play in the 4A-I state tournament, which starts Friday in the Salina Bicentennial Center.