By ROY HESS, Staff Writer
The Brownsville Veterans Memorial Lady Chargers were not to be denied at home Tuesday in non-district volleyball against the McAllen High Lady Bulldogs.
Last season on the same court, the Lady Chargers were surprised by McHi in the bi-district playoffs.
This time, Brownsville Veterans had an answer for just about every McHi challenge to win 25-20, 25-23, 25-20.
“Last year, we were not a very good home-playing team, if that makes sense,” Lady Chargers coach Lisa Mares said. “Coming into this season, I tried to schedule as many home matches as I could for non-district (to help us with that).
“Sometimes we have big crowds, and there are times when these girls want to overplay for the crowd,” Mares added. “I’m really excited about how they played in this match. I was blown away and it was like ‘Wow’ because they were calm and pretty collected while running through things. They played well.”
The two teams already had split a pair of matches this season at tournaments.
In the opening round of the Class 5A playoffs last year at the Brownsville Veterans gym, McHi defeated the Lady Chargers 25-22, 25-19, 25-14 to end the District 32-5A co-champions’ season sooner than they expected.
“This is a great matchup between our teams, it always is,” McHi coach Paula Dodge said. “It’s fun, and it’s a good thing to do at the beginning of the season. Veterans has a wonderful team, and we found out that we have a lot of things to correct. We still have a little more than a week to work on those things before our district starts.”
In Tuesday, the Lady Chargers (18-8) never trailed in the opening game and triumphed 25-20, but quickly fell behind 5-1 and then 6-2 in the second game before rallying to go ahead 20-9 during a back-and-forth set. McHi (22-4) battled back to tie the score at 22 before Brownsville Veterans tallied three of the next four points to prevail 25-23 when the Lady Bulldogs hit into the net on the final-point volley.
Brownsville Veterans spotted the visitors a 1-0 advantage in the last game before going ahead for good early and leading by as many as seven points twice, 21-14 and 22-15. The Lady Chargers maintained their composure down the stretch and went on to take the match in straight sets with their 25-20 victory in the third game.
Mariza Cardenas led the Lady Chargers with 16 kills. Sarah Sandoval added 11 kills and eight digs. Also for the winners, Briana Brown had 21 assists, Clarissa Chavez added 16 assists and Krista Lopez contributed 24 digs.
For McHi, Julia Monday led the way with 11 kills and teammate Carter Helmcamp added six kills and 12 assists. Sydney Pemelton contributed six kills with five block/kills and Kelly Wooden added 15 digs.
Brownsville Veterans next plays at McAllen Rowe on Saturday, while McHi will be at home against Harlingen High the same day.