BROOKVILLE — After defeating Springfield Shawnee in the opening round of the Division III volleyball sectional, Brookville squared off with 2022 district champion Miami East on Thursday at Brookville High School.

The No. 3 seed Lady Devils and No. 9 seed Lady Vikings both played extremely competitive matches. Both teams matched each other point for point before Miami East pulled away to win the first game 25-17.

Brookville took control of the second game but had to hold off a strong finish by the Lady Vikings to win 25-22.

The Lady Devils took a 9-1 lead in the third game but Miami East battled back to secure a 25-22 victory. The Lady Vikings found gaps in the Brookville defense and instead of using spike shots to score, simply tapped the ball to undefended areas to rack up point after point.

With the momentum shifted in their favor, the Lady Vikings won the fourth game 25-19 to secure the overall match victory.

Miami East improved to 15-9 overall while Brookville concludes its season at 18-6.

“I felt like Miami East was way under seeded. They are a very good team and they had a fantastic middle setter combo that was just hard to beat,” said Brookville coach Justin Birchfield. “They took us out of system quite a bit and I felt like that was the big difference. They were able to make us make more mistakes than we made them make.

“I am not going to take anything away from them. We played well for two of the four games tonight and in two of them I felt like we could have played a little bit better, but that’s the nature of the beast sometimes,” Birchfield added. “I am not upset with how we played. I felt like we had more energy than we’ve had the last couple of weeks so we played with a ton of energy, but it was a rough night.”

Reach Ron Nunnari by email: [email protected].