Lillian Daviss has been a key volleyball player for Academy of Our Lady since she joined the varsity team as a freshman.

The 5-foot-10 senior celebrated reaching 1,000 career kills early in the season, and the latest achievement came Thursday with a three-set sweep of Belle Chasse for the third year in a row — a 25-16, 25-21, 25-15 victory that clinched the district championship.

“We always talk about that at the beginning of the season,” said Daviss, who had 10 kills with one ace and nine digs in the home win. “Our first goal is to win district. After that we can focus on state.”

AOL (30-3) began the match at No. 7 in the LHSAA Division II power ratings, three spots ahead of No. 10 Belle Chasse (19-9) — meaning those teams could meet again in the second round of the playoffs if those seedings hold through the end of the season.

The teams met in a preseason scrimmage, something the AOL girls talked about before the latest match.

“We kind of didn’t play that well,” Daviss said about the scrimmage in August. “We came in here like, ‘They’re going to think they’re going to beat us, so we have to come in here and play more and play better.’ I think with all our hard work, we were able to accomplish that.”

Sophomore Zhoey Johnson (six kills, five aces, 12 digs) sparked AOL with four consecutive aces that put the Penguins ahead for good early in the first set.

The second set got close when Belle Chasse trimmed an eight-point deficit to three but twice got whistled for a double-hit violation and once for touching the net.

AOL trailed the third set until Kaitlynn Riley (eight kills, two blocks) put down a kill that tied the score at 10-all and a lifting violation put the Penguins ahead for good. Successive blocks by Rehanna Franklin capped the 6-0 run that put AOL ahead by three points.

The rally in the third set was the latest of many for coach Don Landry’s team.

“We’ve been down so many times, and we always seem to find a way to crawl back in it,” said Landry, whose team reached the Division II state quarterfinals last season.

For Belle Chasse, the match was the latest in which the Cardinals were not at full strength.

Coach Stephenie Andrews said junior middle blocker Abigail Nelson did not play the final two sets because of a knee sprain that has plagued her for much of the past five weeks. Senior Madelyn Rehrig had eight kills and one block.

“AOL obviously has a great group of athletes,” Andrews said. “They swung hard, and they blocked a lot of balls from us. They blocked a lot of our outside hitter balls, so we had to try to make adjustments to try to roll the ball and put some balls in corners and things like that.”

Andrews said her team has held the No. 10 spot in the power ratings “for the last two months, it feels like,” and with AOL at No. 7, “we know what to expect” if the teams meet again, she said.

“We just got to fix a few things,” she said, “and make sure that we put up more blocks and are able to adjust.”