Ranked No. 2 and No. 3 in the state by the Texas Girls Coaches Association, both Fayetteville and San Isidro’s volleyball teams had thoughts that this might be the biggest battle throughout the remainder of the UIL state tournament.
They sure played that way during the regional semifinal Friday.
Fayetteville, however, overcame a first-set loss to advance to today’s UIL Class 1A regional championship match with a 23-25, 25-14, 25-22, 25-22 victory at Brenham.
Fayetteville (41-2) will play Round Top-Carmine, which beat Utopia, in today’s Region IV-1A title match.
The Tigers end their dominant season with a 34-5 record after their 19-match winning streak was stopped.
“I think we started playing our game and we knew who their hitter was and we got control and knew we could take them,” San Isidro head coach Elva Smith said. “But then in the second set, they just kept giving the ball to their big hitter and we just froze and let them take control. We had the opportunity to take them but couldn’t regroup to get back into the ballgame.”
Senior Mia Alvarado, who set a career mark with 30 kills in the previous round in five sets, recorded 33 kills in four sets Friday, despite playing with a sore shoulder she injured during the regional quarterfinals. She added two blocks.
Senior setter Nicole Delgado, part of the 1-2 punch with Alvarado, ended the day with 24 assists and junior Alexandra Garcia contributed 11 kills. The Tigers lose four seniors — Alvarado, Delgado, libero Emma Garcia and Angeles Carmona.
“I’m still so proud of the season and getting to where we did,” Smith said. “We worked hard to get further than that, but we need to keep our heads up and the girls should be proud of what we accomplished. It was heartbreaking. We’ve been talking about it since the seniors were freshmen, that we were going to make history. We still did that, though.
“We told the state of Texas who San Isidro was.”