By MARIO AGUIRRE | STAFF WRITER
McALLEN — Julia Monday didn’t want McAllen High to be that team. That one that lets a match slip away. The one that crumbles in the face of adversity.
Trailing 16-9 in the opening set against McAllen Memorial on Saturday, Monday felt that urgency.
“We realized that this isn’t going to happen,” she said. “We’re not going to be that team that always gets down. We’re going to stay up. Once we realized that, we just pushed through.”
The Lady Bulldogs stormed back to even the opening game at 22 before closing it out with a victory that set the tone in a 25-23, 25-22, 25-23 road win over their District 30-6A rivals.
“It just shows their ability to refocus, come back and get the job done,” McHi coach Paula Dodge said. “That’s one of the things we’ve been talking about, is just playing one point at a time and going from there.”
It was just a week ago that the Lady Bulldogs (29-4, 4-1) faltered after holding a one-game lead over McAllen Rowe. They lost in four sets, later dropping to No. 6 from No. 3 in the latest RGVSports.com top 10 ranking.
On Saturday, however, McHi bounced back against its city rivals, handing third-ranked McAllen Memorial (27-7, 3-1) its first district loss of the season.
“When McAllen teams play each other, it’s always a great rivalry,” Dodge said. “It’s going to be a good match.”
The Lady Bulldogs were relieved to be on the winning end of what turned out to be a close match. Using the momentum it gained from Game 1, McHi raced out to a 16-8 advantage after a McAllen Memorial serving error. The Bulldogs opened their biggest lead at 19-12, when Carter Helmcamp (5 assists) set up a kill.
Slowly, the Lady Mustangs closed in, with Taylor Marburger (15 assists) feeding Helen Kang (7 kills) to narrow the deficit 21-19 and then 21-20 following a McHi gaffe. Following the timeout, the Lady Bulldogs went on a 4-2 spurt, keyed by an assist to Dominique Peña (7 kills) that rippled the net, proceeded by Alli Amaya setting up a kill while Julissa Villarreal connecting with Sydney Pemelton (6 kills) to seal it.
It was Pemelton’s second game-icing kill on Saturday, after serving up an ace in Game 1 that lifted her team.
“Everyone came together,” Monday said. “Our serve-receive was on. Our blocks, our hits, our sets — the team unity was good. We came together and stepped it up.”
McHi’s 18-8 lead in Game 3 quickly evaporated when McAllen Memorial went on a 10-0 run, ignited by six consecutive aces by Marburger, who delivered four straight to force McHi to call for time at 18-all.
The back-and-forth affair ended when Alexi Giusti (19 assists) spotted Peña for the clinching score. It capped an all-around effort from Giusti, too, who notched 2 kills, 5 digs, 1 block and 3 aces.
“I think it was a whole lot of hustling on McHi’s side,” McAllen Memorial coach Lorena Lopez said. “They just got some crazy digs up and kept the ball in play, sat back and waited for us to mess up and we did a couple times.
“We came out here with a game plan, executed some of it, but some things didn’t go our way. I think my team did a good job of just getting mentally tough, even though we were down. I said, ‘Girls, you’ve just got to play. It’s never over.’ And I think they did an excellent job of getting together, tying the match and after that it was just a battle. They’re always learning experiences — what we need to work on, what we’re weak in, what we need to fix. Any time you lose, you have to figure out why and fix it for the next time.”
McAllen Memorial was led by Draik Banks, who posted 9 kills. Nitsch added 5 kills and 12 assists. Briana Muñoz had 14 digs.