Paced behind the setting of Natalie Reyes and the kills from Daniela Alvarez and Lorelai Hill, Sharyland Pioneer trounced Edinburg Vela 25-17, 25-20, 25-23 Tuesday on Vela’s home floor.
Pioneer improved to 19-7. Nearly all of the Diamondbacks’ matches have been away from home. Vela slipped to 17-10.
“It’s been a long first half of the season (away from home),” Pioneer head coach Laura Cavazos said. “We’ve come a long way. We’ve learned a lot about ourselves on the road: trying to battle through home crowds and find ourselves where we need to be.”
Reyes felt the energy needed to match Vela’s.
“Keeping up our energy (was key),” the sophomore setter said. “They had a big crowd. We needed to be energized and looking to score.”
Cavazos credited her team’s defense.
“We put up a good block and we were forcing them to work around that,” she said. “Our back row was passing really well tonight. It was a total team effort. We know there’s just a few games before district. We want to make sure we are fine-tuning our product before we hit the district season.”
After dropping the first two sets, Vela put forth its best effort in the third. There were 12 lead changes in the third set. Vela never led by more than two or trailed by more than three. Trailing 21-20, Glenys Maldonado pounded across one of her 10 kills.
The Diamondbacks hit the next ball out and Vela led 22-21. However, Pioneer rallied to score four of the next five points to take the match. The winning point came on a blast by Thalia Ochoa off a feed from Reyes.
Maldonado’s 10 kills give her 999 for her career. She is expected to reach 1,000 career kills in her next match. She is also close to 1,000 career digs. She picked up 16 on Tuesday.
Pioneer controlled things in the first two sets. In the first, Pioneer engineered an 18-10 lead before Vela went on a 7-3 run to cut the score to 21-17. A kill by Alvarez got the momentum back in Pioneer’s favor and they won the remaining four points for the win.
“I’m looking for my hitters, trying to get that set up (during games),” Reyes said.
In set two, Vela found itself trailing 16-10 before going on a 5-2 run to trail 18-15. Pioneer outscored them 7-5 the rest of the way to lock up the second set.
“We were just making sure that we were talking, being very audible to our setter and amongst ourselves,” Alvarez said. “She’s (Reyes) a phenomenal setter.”
Pioneer will play San Benito in Mission at noon Saturday and begins district play agai... Click here to read full article
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