Raymondville, which entered the weekend two games ahead of La Feria at 10-1, is currently in the driver’s seat for winning the conference title. But with a handful of games still left to play in the regular season, any stumble by the Lady Kats could work to the Lionettes’ advantage as long as they don’t stumble themselves.
Unfortunately for the Lionettes, Raymondville didn’t falter Saturday in its match against Grulla, so a victory over Zapata was crucial in order to keep pace and stay in the 32-4A title hunt.
Early on, however, the Lionettes came out as cold as the air conditioning in their gym and fell into a 12-7 hole. But while the gym’s AC remained frigid, the Lionettes did eventually heat up and then took care of business in a 25-21, 25-10, 25-20 sweep.
With the win, the Lionettes improved to 10-2 and remained two games back of Raymondville with two games left to play, including a season-finale home match against the Lady Kats on Oct. 24.
“Volleyball is such a roller coaster sport,” chuckled La Feria head coach Rebea Fraga after the match. “You can be on these highs then these really big lows… It’s just a crazy game.”
“But the girls did come into their own and finally got focused, and did the little things that fortunately added up to big things.”
In Game 1, service errors hurt the Lionettes as the Lady Hawks took advantage of the miscues to take the early lead. However, La Feria fought through and after tying the set up at 14, rattled off eight straight points to go up 22-14.
The Lady Hawks, to their credit, did battle back and made it difficult for the Lionettes to score the final three points needed to win the set, but those three points did eventually come and La Feria took a 1-0 match advantage.
Riding that momentum, the Lionettes simply overpowered Zapata in the second set en route to an easy 25-10 win.
Eager to put the match away, La Feria came out in the third game and took a quick 5-2 lead. This time, however, Zapata hung tough and refused to go out easily.
No matter what the Lionettes threw at them, the Lady Hawks found a way to answer and never trailed by more than three points throughout the set until back-to-back aces by Myah Salas set up match point at 24-18.
Even then, Zapata held off elimination by scoring three straight points to cut the lead to 24-20. But with just one point needed to take the match, La Feria’s Anelli Rodriguez blasted a shot over the net that bounced off a Zapata player’s hand out of bounds to seal the match.
Up next for the Lionettes is a game at Rio Hondo on Tuesday then they host Raymondville the following Monday.
“It’s hard to not look ahead to that last match of the season because we know what could be at stake,” Fraga said. “Of course we want to win another district title. That’s always our goal. But we can’t control what happens with Raymondville. We can only control what we do and take it one game at a time.”