First week of conference

First off, as of this moment, our libero Lauren Ray is ranked #1 in the country in aces!!!  She is also 16th in digs, while Sapphire Reid is top 20 in kills and Ayve Alvarado is 25th in blocks.  Not too bad.

We started conference play on Tuesday with a great win at home against Vernon.  It was a solid crowd for a 4 pm match and it included our President, Dr. Kappus (who was proudly wearing a Hill volleyball t-shirt).  We played a very solid game, with Lauren Ray having 7 aces, and our 3 middles combining for 25 kills against only 5 errors.

We then went down to Temple on Thursday for our first conference road game.  Temple is always a tough place to play.  Coach Reese and their staff do a great job with the game day atmosphere and it work,s as I'm pretty sure they haven't lost a home conference match in a few years.  We started out pretty well in game 1, and even had a lead at 17-15 I believe, but we failed to capitalize on some good looks and Temple won game 1.

Temple got out to a big lead in game 2 and when we traded side-outs until the end.  Game 3 was similar to game 1 in that we were point for point for half the set, but then Temple pulled away.  Give credit to them; they played a solid match.  We're seeing what we have to do to become a winning team and hopefully we can flip the switch this week.  Also, we had a great crowd in Temple.  It was good to see players I used to coach as well as the parents of those players.  I love having that extended family atmosphere of old players and families still seeing each other and catching up.

This week we have 4 matches.  We travel to Cisco on Tuesday, which is always a tough place to play.  Then we get NCTC at home on Thursday.  Last year in the play-offs we beat NCTC twice, both in 5.  I know they will be fired up to play us and it should be a great game.  Then on Saturday we travel to Dallas to play against Richland and Southwestern Christian.

Hope you can make it out.  We only have 4 more home games and student activities is doing a great job with giveaways and halftime entertainment.  I just went and purchased 75 more t-shirts so we've got some stuff to give away at the games.

Finally, I want to give a huge shout out to Aaron Kalhoff and our women's basketball team who has been at every home match supporting us.  It's been a huge lift for us and we will definitely return the favor when their season starts.