A roster filled with new faces gained valuable experience and confidence on the opening day of volleyball season Tuesday, as the Brownwood Lady Lions split their two matches at Warren Gym with Wall and Llano.
After starting the day with a 25-13, 25-18, 25-12 loss to Wall, the Lady Lions rebounded with a 25-17, 25-22, 25-23 triumph over Llano.
“Wall is a really good program, very senior-heavy and a lot of college commits,” said Lady Lions fourth-year head coach Allison Smith. “I’m not going to take anything away from them, they’re a very solid program, I just didn’t like how we played. We could have stayed with them a lot more. We have a lot more potential than what we showed in the first match. We showed signs at times, but not consistently.
“With Llano, we had our ups and downs but we were a lot more consistent, energetic, focused and assertive. Against Wall, we looked like a deer in the headlights and we didn’t know what to do. Between games we talked about how we wanted to them to be overly aggressive and we would take hitting errors over not going after the ball.”
Big runs were the key to the Lady Lions’ win over Llano, and none was larger than the final set. Trailing 13-3 at one point, Brownwood gradually chipped away at the deficit, finally pulling even at 19 on an ace by Ibis Alvarado. The trading of points continued until a net violation against Llano and an ace from Aubrie Felux staked the Lady Lions to a 24-23 lead. The match then ended with a block at the net by Aniah Hines.
“We tried pretty hard to lose that third set but I’m proud of their tenacity and how they fought together to come back and win it,” Smith said. “Everything was going wrong at the beginning of the set, it was like the Wall game where when we had passes we weren’t executing and then our passers would go in a slump. That really put us in a bind and every team goes through that. The trick is just learning how to cut it off a lot faster and sooner.”
In the opening set, the Lady Lions drew even at 10 on a kill by Hannah Deen, the first of 12 straight points that gave Brownwood a 21-10 cushion. Alvarado and Felux picked up a kill each along the way, while Felux also served a pair of aces during the spurt.
The second set saw Brownwood fall into an early 8-3 hole, but nine straight Lady Lion points resulted in a 12-8 lead for the hosts. Later, trailing 19-17, the Lady Lions reeled off three straight points, aided by a Kassidy Wooten ace to reclaim a 20-19 edge. A kill from Ava Choate later boosted the lead to 23-21, and Hines completed the win by a serving an ace for the 25th point.
Felux led Brownwood with eight kills followed by Miranda Northcutt, Deen and Alvarado with five each, Choate with four and Hines with three. Felux also served five aces trailed by three from Alvarado, two from Wooten and one apiece from Choate, Deen and Hines.
Earlier in the day, the Lady Lions never led at any point in their match against Wall.
In the opening set, Brownwood knotted the score at 2 after yielding the first two points, but the Lady Hawks raced out to a 6-2 edge and never looked back.
In the second set, a kill from Choate allowed Brownwood to even the score at 4 after giving up the first four points. Wall responded with the next five points to open a comfortable 9-4 and kept the Lady Lions at arm’s length the rest of the set.
The finale saw the score tied at 1 and 2, and the Lady Lions later closed to within 5-4 on an ace by Wooten. Wall, however, reeled off the next 15 points in succession to stretch their lead to 20-4.
Northcutt and Felux recorded three kills each, Hines and Alvarado added two apiece, and Deen and Choate both finished with one.
Felux, Northcutt and Wooten served aces.
Brownwood will be back in action Friday and Saturday at the Wimberley tournament. The Lady Lions open tournament action Friday against Needville at 9:15 a.m. followed by matches against Davenport at 10:30 a.m. and San Antonio Keystone at 1 p.m.
Looking ahead to the weekend, Smith said of the Lady Lions (1-1), “Our hustle and our heart is in it. We’re excited and going at it on the floor, I would just like to see a little less hesitation and more of want to – I want to touch the ball, I want to put the ball down type aggression. I’d also would like to see more consistency with our serves. We struggled with that at times today.”
