The Lady Wardens closed the door and locked em up Thursday night during a high school volleyball game in Superior.

Superior’s young Lady Bobcats, after losing several key players to graduation and one to a knee injury, are going through the process of learning to play together and it showed against the more experienced Lady Wardens, who are so named because the Montana State Prison is in their town, Deer Lodge.

Regardless, Deer Lodge came in with what appears to be a very solid squad and jumped out to a quick lead on the host Lady Cats, taking the first set by a score of 25-7.

With a 1-0 match lead in hand, Deer Lodge cranked it up even more in the second set, stunning the Cats 25-7 to take a commanding 2-0 match advantage.

Superior showed no signs of quit, fighting back in the third set before falling 25-16 as Deer Lodge ran their season mark to 2-0 with the convincing victory.

The loss dropped Superior to 0-1 on the year, not counting their appearance in last week’s Mission Invitational tournament.

Izzy Hunter had a match-high 18 assists to lead the Lady Wardens, along with four service aces.

Deer Lodge also got nine kills and one block from Myleigh Clark and a match best 10 kills from Taryn Lamb, who also had four service aces.

No stats were listed for Superior.

The Lady Cats were scheduled to play Saturday in Anaconda against the Lady Copperheads, but no score was available due to an early holiday deadline. Superior will be in Thompson Falls this Thursday (Sept7) for a match versus the Lady Hawks. They return home Saturday, Sept 9 for a game against the Plains Trotters.