McALLEN — McAllen Memorial’s Jocelyn Fernandez voice could be heard in the Mustangs’ huddle before the beginning of their fourth set against McAllen High, down two sets to one.
“Come on, we have to start out better,” the senior middle-hitter/blocker said. “We have to start strong and not have to come from behind.”
After winning that fourth set to force a fifth and deciding set between the two city rivals, her teammates took the motivational words to heart, powering out to a 10-0 lead en route to a dominant 15-3 performance to claim a 25-16, 23-25, 19-25, 25-19, 15-3 win and take over sole possession of first place in District 31-5A on Saturday at the McAllen Memorial gymnasium.
“If we start strong, it gets the momentum going for the whole set, so I think it’s really important to come together in the beginning of the set,” Fernandez said. “If we do that early and if we do make mistakes later in the set, we are fine. We did that in the fifth set.”
The game was supposed to be a battle of the two remaining teams in the district with one loss apiece.
McHi was 5-1 prior to a two-week coronavirus quarantine. When the team returned, it learned it had to forfeit four of those wins due to playing an ineligible player. The Bulldogs came into the match at 1-5 (2-5 counting a forfeit by Valley View, which forfeited all their games through the first round of the district season.).
The win improved Memorial to 10-0 on the season. It had one loss coming to McHi, which was reversed into a Memorial win due to the forfeits. McAllen Rowe is in second place with two losses, following its second win over Sharyland Pioneer on Saturday, as Pioneer sits in third place with three losses. McHi still has to face Pioneer and Rowe, each one more time.
The Mustangs left no doubt in the final set. Freshmen Leah Garcia and Amare Hernandez opened the 10-0 run with a pair of kills, and seniors Natalie Silva and Eliane Silberman combined for three kills and two blocks on the back end of that defining run of a match that took more than two hours to complete.
Memorial has four freshmen who have made a huge impact this season.
“They do a lot for us,” Silva said about the team’s freshmen. “They give us a breath of fresh air and they are nothing like we have ever seen. They have so much talent at such a young age. They give us so much confidence and they want a spot on this team. We are so proud of them.”
Despite an impressive Mustangs performance led by relentless attacks, McHi hung around long enough to force the fifth set. Its scrappy play, led by libero Audrey Zamora and setter Madison Helmcamp, helped set up its offense. The Bulldogs also scored several points hitting into, or around, the Memorial double blocks, often times with balls going off of the outside parts of the block and away from, or out of the reach of, the back-row defenders. But the onslaught of attacks and a tough-blocking wall — one that during one rally sent three straight Celina Saenz kill attempts straight back to the McHi side — was too much for the Bulldogs to overcome.
“We know as a blocker our job is to get a touch on it and we rely on the back row to finish it off,” Silva said. “It was just a little bit of unluckiness, not being in the right place at the right time, but we finished it in the end and we couldn’t be happier.”
The tough wall of blockers forced McHi to attempt more tips and focus more on accuracy and finding holes in the Memorial defense. It worked occasionally, but when it didn’t, it more often than not set Memorial up for another shot at a blistering attack.
“We knew that the defense would have to push us through,” Fernandez said. “We saw them (McHi). They kept tipping and kept tipping. We need to be consistent with getting those tips and putting it away quickly after that.”
“This is them working together and it truly is teamwork at its finest,” McAllen Memorial head coach Ashley Doffing said. “We should practice defending tips a lot more, but these girls don’t tip. The first set was all them and then to see them snap out of it after losing two sets shows their maturity and I’m excited to see what else these girls will do.
Four players finished with double digit attacks for McAllen Memorial led by Hernandez with 16, Garcia and Fernandez with 12 each and Silva with 10. Hernandez added 10 kills in the Mustangs’ afternoon win over Valley View, improving their record to 11-0 with three matches remaining — against McAllen Rowe on Tuesday, PSJA Memorial on Thursday and Sharyland Pioneer on Saturday. McHi defeated PSJA Southwest in its afternoon contest to improve to 3-6, still in the race to capture the fourth and final postseason spot.