HP served notice to the rest of the regional field Tuesday night with one of its best performances of the season, while also serving Wylie East out of Highlander Fieldhouse in both teams' regular-season finale.

The Scots (29-15, 12-2) scored 22 aces in the match, of almost one of every three points they scored in the 25-5, 25-14, 25-7 win. HP enters the playoffs next week as the second-seeded team out of District 10-4A, and will face Frisco Liberty (20-19) in the first round next Tuesday. Game details as to the site and time will be determined Wednesday. The winner of HP-Liberty will face the winner of South Oak Cliff-Bryan Adams in the second round.

In a night set aside to honor HP's five seniors, it was a junior who set the tone in the opening moments. Catherine Ken came to serve after the Scots took a 1-0 lead, and ran off a string of nine consecutive points, five of them aces. Ken's jump serve targeted Wylie East's back row, and the defensive specialist scored a string of four aces in a row until the last of her 10 serves sailed long out of bounds. 

Senior Night - the final home match for HP seniors Caroline Culwell, Brittany Fersing, Isabel Herndon, Hope Ogden and Margeaux Mendenhall - was a dominating night against a Wylie East team that went winless in district play. Each of the Scots' first six servers scored at least one ace, and it took only four rotations for HP to win the first set, 25-5. By the time the serving string of aces was broken, the Scots had an 11-2 lead in the second set.

Ken led the way with seven aces, followed by Culwell, Mendenhall, Elizabeth Lee and Herndon with three each, and Ogden with 2.

HP posted some offense inside the serving line, too. In a sign of things to come, Herndon's return to the court sparked the Scots' back row. She had been injured the past two months. Herndon entered the match to start the second set, and scored an ace on the second point of the set. She had two aces in a five-serve string that gave HP a 4-1 lead to start the set. 

Mendenhall made the most of her limited opportunities because of the aces and a quick sweep to lead the Scots with 10 kills. Tayler Robertson also returned from an injury and entered the match in the second set in time to register a block and a kill. 

 

The return of Herndon and Robertson bolstered the Scots and gave a handful of scouts in the crowd something else to look at beyond the lineup they've used the past month. It was the first time HP has used its full lineup at full strength since the opening tournament of the season.

HP used an all-senior lineup in the third set along with Lee, the junior setter. Fersing appeared fully recovered from an injury that sat her down for two weeks earlier this month, and scored two kills during a 7-2 HP run that started the third set. 

Culwell moved up to be an outside hitter late in the match, sure to be a surprise note on any opponents' scouting sheets, and registered three kills. 

The match also marked only the fifth and sixth times this season that HP has held an opponent to single digits in a set. Two of those also came in separate matches against Rockwall earlier in district play.