PORT NECHES — It's very likely the two best volleyball teams in District 20-4A met on Friday night. The biggest thing that separated the Port Neches-Groves Lady Indians and Little Cypress-Mauriceville Lady Bears was Christine Sicktich, who led all players with 29 kills.

   When she left her feet and rared her right arm back, more times than not the junior smashed home a point for the Lady Bears.

   Rock-A-Noos fought hard but Sicktich and LC-M did just enough to edge out the Lady Indians 3-2 in this year's first district meeting.

  With the win, LC-M improves to 14-6 overall and 1-0 in league play. The Bears will be back in action today at 12 p.m. when they take on the Ozen Lady Panthers for the YMBL championship.

   LC-M head coach Vicki Castino said today's matchup will probably be as tough as Friday's.

   "PN-G is a great team," she said. "Every time we played them last year in went to five games and even from the beginning it felt like, here we go again."

   With the exception of LC-M's 25-16 win in Game 3, every game went down to the wire. In the end, the Lady Bears got revenge on the defending district champions, beating them 25-20 in Game 1, 25-16 in Game 3 and 15-9 in Game 5.

   In that third game, after LC-M lost Game 2, Sicktich drove four thundering spikes into the ground early in Game 3 to set the tone. LC-M led by as much as 14 in the third game.  

   The Lady Tribe won Game 2 with a score of 25-18 and then came from behind in Game 4, scoring the final five points of that game to overcome a 22-20 defecit and win 25-22.

    PN-G head coach Barbara Comeaux said she was proud of her team's effort but felt there were too many mistakes.

    "In close games like this, you can't make that many mistakes," she said. "We were lucky to be as close as we were. We had opportunities to win and we just didn't take them. We fought hard, though and it's still early in the season. We're going to keep working hard."

   The Lady Indians, which stayed perfect in district last season, is now 10-4 overall in 2008 and starts league play 0-1.

   PN-G will be back in action today when it squares off with Sante Fe at the Dickinson Tournament at 10 a.m.

   LC-M will host Central on Tuesday for its next district contest, while PN-G will travel to Nederland.

  "This was really important for us," Castino said. "It's always important to start district out with a win but it's especially nice to beat PN-G. They beat us all three times last year, so this means a lot for the girls because this is the team to beat. They are always the team to beat."