By ROY HESS | Staff Writer
The tuneup is complete, and the showdown is next on the schedule.
Brownsville Veterans Memorial prepared for Saturday’s District 32-5A volleyball showdown with a fairly routine 25-7, 25-17, 25-17 win on its home court Tuesday against the Lopez Lady Lobos.
The victory gave the Lady Chargers a 6-0 record in 32-5A, same as defending champion Edcouch-Elsa, which won 25-13, 25-18, 26-24 on Tuesday at Porter to also stay unbeaten in district at 6-0.
The Lady Chargers play at the Lady Yellowjackets at 4 p.m. Saturday, with the winner taking over sole possession of the 32-5A lead as the first round of district play closes.
“Saturday is a big one for us,” Lady Chargers coach Elizabeth Mares said. “It should be a good one. It’s just going to come down to who makes less errors.
“I think we’re both good teams defensively, and offensively I think it’s going to be who makes less errors that day,” Mares added. “We’ll see what happens.
“We went over there (to E-E) last year during the second round of district and beat them, so that’s a positive for us (going into Saturday’s match). I’m going to tell our girls about that, so hopefully it will light a little fire under them.”
The Lady Chargers won all three of Tuesday’s games with relative ease. Unforced errors by the Lady Lobos on the final two points of the third set gave Brownsville Veterans a 25-17 win, and that clinched the match.
Earlier during the third game, Lopez went ahead 6-5 when the Lady Chargers hit into the net. It was the last time in the match for the Lady Lobos (1-5) to hold the lead.
There were seven ties during the third game, the final one coming at 12.
Mares said she became a little frustrated with her team’s play, even though it won with a sweep of the match.
“I thought we started off well tonight, and then I told the girls that there is something I think we need to work on, and that’s minimizing our errors,” the Lady Chargers’ coach said. “As soon as I said that, they started making a lot of errors. I was, like, ‘I’m going to start counting every error that we have, and you’re going to owe me something for them.’
“It just seemed like they started making more and more errors, so we still need to work on our mental game and our mental toughness,” Mares added. “I shouldn’t say something and they freak out about it.
“They were, like, ‘Coach, you shouldn’t have said anything,’ but I said, ‘No, you need to be mentally tougher.’ I just told them they needed to work harder because Saturday is a big one. They started picking things up and playing harder toward the end of the match tonight, so that was good.”
Alex Parchmont finished with three aces and 16 digs for the Lady Chargers. Monica Garcia added nine kills, and Daniela Espinosa contributed 18 assists.