It would have been tough for someone who didn’t know that Lawrence High was playing host to a volleyball quadrangular Thursday night to walk into the LHS gym and ascertain the home team.

Like most matches inside the Lions’ den, there was plenty of yelling, but most of the cheers were directed toward two visiting squads.

“I’ve never seen anything like it before,” Lawrence senior setter Carolyn Raynes said of the showdown between Lansing and Leavenworth. “I guess you could kind of compare it to when we played Free State earlier this season out of town.

“It was just so loud and intense in here tonight, though, it was really crazy.

If anything, Raynes said looking over at the excitement coming from the nearby court helped pump up Lawrence High players during their match with Shawnee Mission East.

Unfortunately for the Lions, they couldn’t complete a quadrangular sweep — falling to SM East, 25-21, 25-16. LHS, however, defeated Lansing, 25-23, 25-16, and Leavenworth, 15-25, 25-19, 25-8.

“That’s just a great team,” LHS coach Jo Huntsinger said of the Lancers. “Tonight I think we played a lot more consistent. It wasn’t really even a matter of our consistency as it was we just ran into one of the state’s top teams and one of the state’s top players.”

While Huntsinger praised the play of SM East senior Stephanie Bruggman, the Lions (14-11) looked impressive in all but one game of their other two matches.

“I think we really played well on the night except for maybe one or two games,” Raynes said. “I don’t know what it’s going to take to finally get that sweep. Maybe just a little more consistency.”

The Lions played evenly with the Lancers for the majority of the first game, but let SM East go on a 5-0 run after allowing the Lancers a 12-10 lead, which provided the difference.

“We’re definitely continuing to improve,” said Huntsinger, whose team will serve as host to another quad Tuesday against Manhattan, Topeka Hayden and Washburn Rural. “One of these days we’re going to take a quad outright.”