Lawrence High's Emily Bracciano, left, and Kate Melton celebrate their victory over Leavenworth on Thursday, September 20, 2007, at LHS. The Lady Lions beat Leavenworth, 25-23 and 25-18.

Lawrence High's Maddy Orth spikes the volleyball against Leavenworth on Thursday at LHS.

The Lawrence High volleyball squad finally had the opportunity to showcase its skills in its own gym.

By no means did the Lions let the crowd down in a sweep of their home-opening triangular against Leavenworth (25-23, 25-18) and Shawnee Mission Northwest (25-19, 25-21).

“We practice in here every day, so it was really nice having our home crowd here to get the momentum going,” Lawrence’s Tayler Tolefree said. “We have a lot of fans that are behind us, so that was really helpful.”

Tolefree and her teammates gave the crowd a climactic finish to the evening in Game 2 against SM-Northwest.

With the score 20-20, Darcy McDonough served up three straight aces and forced the Cougars to call a timeout to recoup. It didn’t help.

Tolefree delivered a kill to make it match-point. Moments later, Tolefree put down her ninth kill of the night.

“It’s not just a win in your head, but a good picture of finalizing. I don’t want to say dominating because we didn’t dominate the game by any stretch of the imagination,” LHS coach Stephanie Magnuson said. “It’s good to have that as your last memory – especially a good kill that decided us winning the game.”

The night initially started off slow for Magnuson’s squad, taking a little time to adjust to Leavenworth’s tough defense at the net.

“They’re incredibly scrappy. They’re a great defensive team,” the first-year coach said of Leavenworth. “We just had to figure out between games one and two where we could put the ball down and get kills because it was hard to get kills against them.”

LHS’s Lindsey Murray had the most success, collecting 10 of her team-high 14 kills against the Pioneers.

The Lions have won four of their last five matches and have a week before playing host to another triangular next Thursday.