By ROY HESS
Staff Writer
Sometimes, it takes a little extra incentive to encourage a team to win.
Brownsville Veterans Memorial coach Lisa Mares felt as though her volleyball team wasn’t really playing with full intensity and was making far too many unforced errors during its District 32-5A match Tuesday night at Lopez.
In somewhat of an unorthodox coaching move, she offered to cancel the team’s practice today if the Lady Chargers displayed a stronger effort in the third game after barely prevailing during the first two sets.
The move paid off as she got her team to respond by finishing strong and sweeping the Lady Lobos 25-22, 26-24, 25-13.
“I think we started out with our energy a little bit low, but toward the end in the second set, we brought it up, and we were more competitive,” said Frida Rangel, a senior middle blocker for the Lady Chargers. “We played harder (in the third game), and that really helped us a lot.
“I think that (offer by our coach to cancel practice) definitely made us push harder,” Rangel added. “I still think we could have pushed harder (without the offer), but regardless, it really did help (us respond).”
Brownsville Veterans improved to 5-1 in district with Tuesday’s victory, and Lopez slipped to 3-3. Both teams remain in the playoff hunt.
“Defensively, the Lopez girls were picking up everything we hit to them, and they had a lot of energy,” Mares said. “We were making a lot of errors, and it was our own errors that were hurting us. I was telling our girls (during a timeout), ‘You’re beating yourselves because you’re committing so many errors.’ Our ball handling was off, and everything was off, but credit to Lopez, they were on.
“The match could have definitely gone a different way,” Mares added. “I’m glad we came back in the second set (after being down 23-20 and 24-21), but sometimes you can dig yourself into a hole like that and not get out.
“I told the girls, ‘Hey, maybe if we have fewer errors (in the third game), I’ll think about canceling practice.’ Then they played really well. I said, ‘Do I have to tell you guys that (just to get you to play better)?”
Rangel, Pamela Sanchez and Valeria Sumaya each recorded eight kills to lead the Lady Chargers. Also for Brownsville Veterans, Alex Parchmont, Daniela Espinosa and Aly Boek finished with 26, 21 and 14 digs, respectively. Espinosa added 31 assists.
Brownsville Veterans broke out of a 22-22 tie to win the first game 25-22, and the second game was deadlocked at 24 before the Lady Chargers prevailed 26-24.
“Lopez is a good team, and they’ve definitely improved since last year, but it felt good to know that we could work our way back up after we started so slow,” said Sanchez, a senior outside hitter. “I think this win will really pump us up for our next match and help us get into the mood and into the zone for Saturday, because we have an important match coming up.”
The Lady Chargers next face a key challenge to close out the first round of district play at 1 p.m. Saturday. They play host to district leader Edcouch-Elsa.
“It was good to have a match like this against Lopez, especially with the Edcouch-Elsa match coming up Saturday,” Mares said. “Hopefully we learned something from this match against Lopez.”