It took two games for the Tahlequah High School volleyball team to figure out Bixby.

The Lady Tigers stormed out to a 5-0 lead in game three and while Bixby rallied and eventually took the lead, the Lady Tigers wouldn’t let them get away like they did in the first two games.

However, the end result turned out exactly the same as the first two games as the Lady Tigers lost, completing a 3-0 sweep in the Lady Tigers’ home opener on Tuesday night at Tahlequah Middle School.

The Lady Tigers had been beaten soundly in the first two games, losing 25-12 and 25-16, but the third game the Lady Tigers had caught on to how to play Bixby.

After Tahlequah’s initial 5-0 run, Bixby scored five straight points to tie the score. After that, there were nine ties and three lead changes, unfortunately for the Lady Tigers, Bixby got the last lead change as it went up 21-20 after a 20-all tie. The lead eventually went up to 22-20 and Bixby went on to win the third game, 25-22.

“We just had to get over the initial shock of how well they played,” THS coach Don Ogden said. “The key was not letting them get the big gap where we end up playing behind. The third game we did a little bit better at that.”

In the first game, the Lady Tigers fell behind 5-0 before scoring its first point on a Bixby serve that was hit out of bounds. Two of Tahlequah’s first three points in the game were due to Bixby errors as Tahlequah trailed 10-3 at one point.

“Whenever you play good people, if they don’t give you a lot of unforced errors, you’re in trouble,” Ogden said. “That’s the thing about rally scoring is that you can kind of live on other people’s mistakes but if you’re playing a team that makes limited mistakes, you’re not getting a lot of easy points therefore you have to manufacture yours and if you don’t, the game gets away from you. In the third game we didn’t make a lot of unforced errors and we manufactured a little better.”

The Lady Tigers did come back to as close as 11-6 at one point, but another rally by Bixby closed out the game as it took a 19-8 lead.

In the second game, Tahlequah trailed 1-0 but tied at at 1-1. Bixby took a 3-1 lead and never trailed after that, however they couldn’t push the Lady Tigers away either until late.

Bixby held a 16-11 lead and scored six straight points to take a 22-11 lead in the win.

Sarah Nelson led the Lady Tigers with 14 kills, three aces and three blocks while Haley Kay had five kills and Valerie Rule had two aces.

The Lady Tigers next play on Thursday at Sequoyah High School starting at 5 p.m.

“The rankings are going to be out (later) and Bixby is going to be in the top three or four,” Ogden said. “It seems hard when we play the good people because they expose all of your deficiencies but the biggest thing is to continue to practice and we’ll go play at Sequoyah Thursday.”