Lady Mustangs dropped in final home district game

NIXON — It’s been a tough season for the inexperienced Nixon-Smiley Mustangs. But despite their winless district record, the Lady Mustangs are still fighting for each other and their head coach, even after a three-set loss in their final home game of the season against the Karnes City Lady Badgers, (14-25, 13-25, 19-25).

“We’ve gone through so much adversity and they continued to play and they continued to fight,” head coach Kim Payne said, “so it hasn’t been the season that we’ve all wanted but they’ve continued to play and they’ve continued to fight for me.”

The first set started off back and forth, but after the Lady Mustangs took the 6-4 lead, Karnes City would go on a 15-0 run to go up 19-6, a lead they’d keep for the rest of the set.

A new lineup was put out on the court, with youth being a prominent factor in Tuesday’s game. With many sophomores on the team, Payne knows that all they can really do is get better.

“We’re young,” she admits, “[we’ll] continue to play and continue to get better.”

Even after the first set loss, the Lady Mustangs continued to get after it, diving for balls, trying for kills and sneaky tips, with attacks coming in from Tyhana Mejia and even a serving ace by sophomore Alexis DeLeon.

But after keeping it a tight contest again in the second set, with the game tied at 9-9, Karnes City again went on a long run, going 13-2 run before a bad serve by the visitors cut it to 22-12.

The Lady Badgers will score the next three of four points to finish out set two with a 25-13 victory.

The third and final set of the match was a bit closer as scores came in from Amanda Muñoz kills, aces by Celeste Arriaga and Kaela Warzecha. But ultimately Karnes City proved to be too much as they’d win the final set 25-19.

“They’re not giving up,” Payne said of her girls on the court. “They know that we don’t have the height like all these other teams do. [But] you know what, they don’t let that be an excuse. They still fight, they still go after the ball and they work hard.”

Even with the youth movement in the Lady Mustangs’ team, Payne still had three seniors who played their final home volleyball game of their high school careers.

“I was just talking to the seniors in there, especially Kaela and T [Tyhana] and Miranda but Kaela and T, they’re my two captains and they have fought through tooth and nail through this whole season,” Payne said. “They could have thrown in the towel long time ago and they didn’t and they stood beside me and fought and they’ve given me their hearts and that’s all I can ask.”

Nixon-Smiley ends their season with two road games. Tonight they’ll travel to Stockdale with a scheduled start time of 5:30 p.m.