KANSAS CITY - Maryville's dreams of bringing home the school's first girl's state championship and first state championship of any kind since 2001 were derailed Friday morning. The Spoofhounds volleyball squad started out the state championship tournament strong, winning its opening match against College Heights Christian 25-21, 25-22.

But inconsistent play cost them against Scott City 25-23, 25-10 and defending state champions Hermann 25-10, 25-20.

"We're happy to be here," coach Lori Klaus said, "but at the same time I think the girls know they could have played better.

"Whether that would have changed the outcome? I don't know. The teams we lost to are very solid teams all the way around."

With a state title out of reach, the team is ready to focus all its energy on winning the third-place game against the same College Heights team at 9 a.m. today.

"I'm still really excited," Rachel Tobin said. "Third place in the state is still really good, and it's still a goal. I really want to win."

Playing the same team on back-to-back days isn't something that's unfamiliar to Maryville (37-3). In fact, just such a scenario resulted in the team's only regular season loss when they beat Lafayette County in a tournament before losing to the same team the next day - a fact that isn't lost on the team.

"It's very motivating," Tobin said. "It just makes us want to come out stronger and harder right from the beginning so we can beat them from the start and get a good jump on them."

Entering the season, the team knew it had a talented roster that could possibly do something special. But winning a state championship or getting to the state semifinals wasn't the first thing on the team's mind.

"It's always in the back of your mind," Jordan Stiens said. "But we had our goals set out for a district championship, and once we got that we knew that we weren't satisfied so we wanted to go as far as we could."

The Spoofhound leaders continued their strong play throughout Friday's three-match span. Tobin was able to set the table for the team with 41 total assists. Stiens was the main finisher with 22 kills, but Jessica From also added 13. Libero Leah Bostwick countered the other teams' strong hitting with 29 digs, and the versatile Libbey Howell contributed on both sides of the ball with 12 kills and 19 digs.