At top, Bullard Lady Panther senior, Nikki Coleman was named to the Centerville Tournament, All- Tournament Team. Coleman totaled out with 38 kills, 73 digs, four solo blocks, and four service aces as the Lady Panthers beat Fairfied for third-place this past Saturday. Above, the BHS freshmen team takes a break for words of wisdom from head coach, Shelly Ritch. The freshmen team finished in fourth place overall at the Pine Tree tournament this past Saturday. At left, freshman, Kristin Beam goes to work from the service line in one of the games played at Pine Tree High School this past weekend. The BHS freshmen and junior varsity will compete in the Arp Invitational Volleyball Tournament his Saturday. The freshmen play Nacogdocches at 10 a.m. The junior varsity begins the tournament against Kaufman at 8 a.m. CENTERVILLE - The Bullard Lady Panthers took third place at the Centerville Invitational Tournament, this past weekend held at the Centerville High School gymnasium.

The Lady Panthers (10-4), beat Fairfield in a nail-biter, 28-26, and 26-24 for the third spot in the championship bracket. The host team, Centerville won their own tournament with a win over Mexia in the finals.

(Courtesy Photos and Staff Photo by Doc Smith) Senior, Nikki Coleman was named to the all-tournament team for the Lady Panthers. Coleman finished the tournament with 38 kills, 73 digs, four solo blocks and four service aces.

In pool-play, on Thursday, Bullard made two-game sweeps of Madisonville, North Zulch and Grapeland.

Madisonville lost 25-22, 25-23, and North Zulch fell to the Lady Panthers 25- 16, and 25-11. Grapeland lost by identical 26-16 scores to advance the Lady Panthers to the championship bracket.

"We played really great on Thursday," said head coach, Kala Lanningham. "We had worked on a lot of new things on offense and defense."

Ashlee Shidler and Brittany Glover were cited by Lanningham for stepping up their game with blocks, while Coleman, and Valarie Roberts led the team with 16 and 15 digs respectively against Madisonville.

The championship bracket brought on better competition, and much closer contests as the Lady Panthers beat Iola, 25-23, 25-23 in the first round of championship play.

Next up, it was Mexia that handed the Lady Panthers their only setback of the tournament. The Bullard girl's made Mexia earn the finals berth with a first game win at 25-22. Mexia turned it around to win by 18-25, and 18-25.

"We played well on Saturday morning against Iola, and did some good things," Lanningham added, "and we played pretty good against Mexia but we just had a few breakdowns at service return that hurt us, and we didn't finish when we had the chance in game two."

In the third place game, it was a backand forth contest throughout, and it took some extra serves in both games for the Lady Panthers to win the game.

Bullard won by counts of 28-26, and 26-24, with Coleman and Roberts pounding out eight kills each, with Coleman adding 11 digs and Roberts scrambling for 14 digs of her own.

Ariel Hamby set the floor with 12 assists and served out two aces.

"We played really well against Fairfield," Lanningham was proud to say, "Fairfield has a strong team and we really tried to control the pace of the game with our offense."

The Lady Panthers entertained a dual match with Arp and All Saints on Tuesday. See the next edition of the Bullard Banner News for the results.

The Lady Panthers teams will trek to Brownsboro this Thursday to compete in the Bearette Boosters Fifth Annual Volleyball Tournament.

The Bullard varsity is set up in Pool B with Kaufman, Elkhart, and Westwood.

Game times for the ladies are 2 p.m. against Kaufman, and then 4:30 p.m. as they play Westwood. Pool play wraps up with Elkhart at 6:10 p.m.

The junior varsity and freshmen play on Saturday in the Arp Vollleyball Tournament.