Lady Cards outlast Nixon-Smiley

NIXON — The annual season opener before Shiner St. Paul and Nixon-Smiley volleyball squads looked much different Monday than it did last year as both teams battled in the five-set thriller. Although the win went again to the visiting Lady Cardinals, the Lady Mustangs were up for the challenge and were just one point away from taking the victory before St. Paul rallied back and took it away.

St. Paul took the win (19-25, 35-33, 14-25, 25-20, 16-14) but the game was far different from last year’s start.

“[I’m] not very satisfied with it,” Lady Cardinals’ head coach Kayla Natho said. “I’m proud of the girls for not giving up, for fighting till the very end, but we have a lot of to work on and they know.”

Nixon-Smiley surprised the Lady Cards in the first set with their tenacity both on the offensive and defensive sides. The Lady Mustangs couldn’t have asked for a better start with an ace from Celeste Arriaga, a joint blocked from Kaela Warzecha and Amanda Muñoz and later a kill from Lexi Trammell to go up 4-1 in the first set.

“It’s a night-and-day difference from last year,” Nixon-Smiley head coach Kim Payne admitted. “They’re only going to go up from here.”

The Lady Mustangs also took advantage of multiple self-inflicted errors by Shiner St. Paul, leading to a first set 25-19 win.

“We were shooting ourselves in the foot,” Natho explained, “we were not being disciplined on defense. The ‘setter dunk’ got us 90 percent of the time.”

By the second set, the Lady Cards were reeling, going down 21-14. But as it goes with Shiner St. Paul, a comeback ensued, with the team going on a 9-2 run to notch the game up at 23 apiece.

“We didn’t execute our hitters,” Payne explained. “As I looked at it, we played safe, just getting the ball over the net hoping they would make mistakes. You can’t hope that your opponents are going to make mistakes. We’ve got to be on our game and hit and we didn’t do that.”

After Nixon-Smiley got their 24th point of the set, both teams would then combine to have an astonishing 11 set-point opportunities, meaning in this game where you must win by two, there were a total of 11 times where a team was indeed one point away from taking the set.  There were also eight lead changes in those final plays until finally, after a tied game at 33, Mallory Grabarkievtz got a kill to go up 34-33 and Allie Kutac finished the set with an ace to notch the game at one set apiece.

“That’s the kind of girls we have at St. Paul,” Natho said, “they’re never going to give up that easily. They’re going to make it interesting, they’re going to fight to the finish.”

But even after that exhausting set, the Lady Mustangs were able to gather themselves and dominated Shiner St. Paul in the third with a 25-14 win. The Lady Cards’ only lead of the set was at the beginning with a 1-0 advantage after a bad Nixon-Smiley serve. After the Lady Mustangs took the 2-1 lead, they would never relinquish it.

“That second game, a lot of times we would have fallen down and died,” Payne said, “and they didn’t do that tonight. They fought, so I’m proud of them.”

St. Paul adjusted in the fourth, taking that set 25-20, though Natho explained that there wasn’t much of a change in terms of their defense.

“We didn’t need to change anything,” she said, “the girls just needed to be more patient. They were leaving their base too soon and now that you’re moving backwards it makes it really hard to move forward to go get that ball. Once we kind of addressed that issue it got a little bit better.”

The final set was another back-and-forth struggle before the Lady Cardinals again made some errors and the Lady Mustangs were up 14-10, just one point away from victory. St. Paul ended the match scoring six straight to take the fifth and final set.

“ We just didn’t step up and hit,” Payne said of the loss. “When we were hitting, we were winning. When we let that hitting game go, then our game fell apart.”

But the effort that was there is one that Payne and the Lady Mustangs will lean on for the rest of the season.

“I can’t ask for anything else,” she said. “Other teams that I’ve coached here, that ball is hitting the floor. They’re not letting balls hit the floor. They’re rolling, they’re diving, they’re doing whatever it takes to get that ball up. I can’t complain too much, we’re going to be OK.”

As for Shiner St. Paul, Natho believes that the team will need to trust each other so that a game like this doesn’t happen again.

“With all the girls we have a lot of them this is their first opportunity to play on varsity, they’re new, they’re still trying to figure it out, we’re still trying to work together so until we can trust our teammates right next to us, expect to see that again.”

Both teams are in tournaments this week, with Shiner St. Paul travelling to Bellville for the Bellville Faith Academy Tournament and Nixon-Smiley at the Shiner High Tournament. Games were played Thursday, but results were unavailable to press. Both teams resume tournament play tomorrow.