McALLEN — McAllen High volleyball head coach Michael Smith has been watching something fascinating grow within middle hitter Andrea Tovar.
That growth exploded Friday at the annual McAllen Poundest volleyball tournament as Tovar dominated at the net and helped lead McHi to a 3-0 record and the No. 1 seed going into today’s final round of the 22-team, three-day tournament. The Bulldogs will play at 9 a.m. today at the McAllen High gym against PSJA High in the first round of the gold bracket.
McAllen Rowe will play McAllen Memorial, also at 9 a.m. The winners of those two matches will face each other in the semifinals.
The other two quarterfinal gold bracket matches, at 10 a.m. will have Sharyland High, which also went 3-0 on Friday with wins over Laredo United South, McAllen Memorial and Weslaco East against Los Fresnos and Brownsville Riveras play Brownsville Veterans. The semifinals are scheduled for 11 a.m. and noon. The gold bracket championship is slated for 2 p.m.
Tovar, a senior who opted out of playing last season due to the COVID-19 pandemic, tallied seven kills and a pair of blocks in the first match of the day, a two-set win over Los Fresnos. More than just the numbers, her presence at the net forced hitters to look for ways around or through her. When they did, the defense picked up the ball and often times returned with an attack. Her excitement reverberated throughout the team and her performance helped them during a time where they didn’t seem to be playing quite in sync.
“I think this has been coming,” Smith said. “We started to see it grow over the summer and then starting out more in scrimmages. Then something really clicked with her offensively.”
Tovar got her team rolling during the first match and never stopped, showing more confidence, bigger hits, solid blocks and precision shots throughout the day. Tovar said she began this year a worried about being behind.
“I was concerned about disconnecting with my setters and the rest of the team because everybody connected last year,” the senior said. “But we all came together and we’re really close.”
On at least two occasions, an opponent would try to sneak either a second ball or a tip over Tovar, but she extended, and put the ball right back down on the other side of the net, amplifying her role at the net.
“I was just reading the hitter and could tell by looking at their hands they were going to throw it at us and just got it,” she said.
Tovar credited the healthy competition between the team’s four “bigs” (outside hitters Celina Saenz and Ada Sadlier, co-middle hitter Sheila Zamora and Tovar) for pushing one another during practices. She and Saenz have been teammates since middle school and Tovar said being able to watch her has also influenced her play
“I definitely think that it’s great to be on the opposite net of each other day in and day out in practice. It’s a bonus, typically with middles,” Smith said. “Sheila and Andrea are consistently going at it in practice and their friendly competition makes them both so much better the more they go after each other.”
Through the first two matches of the day, Saenz finished with a team-high 19 kills while Zamora added 12 as the Bulldogs kept moving the ball around while defenders played chase the ball. Stats were not available by press time for the third match, a sweep of Harlingen South. The Bulldogs dropped one set earlier in the day against Brownsville Veterans, forcing a third set.
Smith said it’s more than the physical parts of the game that has elevated Tovar to a serious threat each rally, but also gaining a deeper understanding of everything that’s happening on the court.
“I think it came maybe a little sooner than expected but we’ve seen it coming. She works extremely hard, asks a lot of questions and what we want her to do and what we are seeing,” the first-year McHi coach said. “We work hard to be able to put her in good positions and to be able to finish things off.
“With this group I’m very hesitant to cap their potential. They have more of that than I’m even able to see right now and we want to go even faster and she’s been eating that up. The faster we can go, the more we can get teams out of their grooves.”