Lady Rams take third in Peyton Chavez Memorial Tournament

STAFF WRITER

[email protected]

The Lady Rams refused to get swept during their final match against the Lady Wolverines during their consolation match in the gold bracket this weekend’s Peyton Chavez Memorial Volleyball Tournament as Portales fought back from a two-set deficit to salvage its weekend with a five-set win 17-25, 18-25, 25-21, 25-15, 15-7.

Portales and Texico have to be disappointed in their showing during this weekend’s tournament as they battled each other for third and fourth place, rather than the championship game where they were the No. 1 and No. 2 seeds, respectively.

Staff photo: Matthew Asher

Portales junior Lindsey Blakey goes for a spike in the second set of the consolation match against Texico in the Peyton Chavez Memorial Tournament. Blakey finished with 19 kills and Portales won in five sets.

Texico (9-3) started off the match strong, winning their first two sets by eight and seven points, respectively and they looked to end the match early in the third when they built an 18-6 lead. Portales coach Charity Gomez called a time-out to regroup her team.

“I told them just to go back to the basics,” Gomez said. “We needed to make sure we could pass well and build momentum going into the next set. You get the momentum, you are in control.”

The pep talk worked and Portales fought back to tie the set at 20 before winning 25-21.

“We didn’t capitalize on the momentum we had,” Texico coach Kristen Scanlan said. “We let them back in the game. You can’t do that because volleyball’s a momentum game.”

Portales (4-7) won the fourth set and took total command in the fifth set when Lady Rams senior Falyn Hamilton got eight-straight service points with the majority coming from short serves to give Portales an 8-0 lead.

“I just sat back and relaxed,” Hamilton said. “This is what I do everyday so I just did me.”

Gomez was impressed with the start to the fifth set that Hamilton provided.

“In practice (Falyn) will practice her short serves,” Gomez said. “We joke and tell her not to do that. She’s confident she can jump serve a short serve. We just let her serve how she wants.”

Hamilton also recorded the final kill to give Portales the match win. In addition to Hamilton, Gomez mentioned junior Lindsey Blakey as one of the stars of the match, who finished with 19 kills and eight blocks.

“We’ve been telling her that if she’s confident in her abilities, we’ll do fine because our offense runs through her,” Gomez said. “If she plays well, it’s going to be very tough for somebody to stop her. After this weekend, I think she finally believes that she has that impact on the game. When she gets the ball, she can get a kill nearly everytime.”

District play is now right around the corner for both teams and they admit they still have work to do before making a title run.

For Texico, the Wolverines need to learn from their mistakes in this weekend so avoid a long conference schedule.

“It’s a very disappointing weekend,” Scanlan said. “We usually play much better. Our passing broke down. On defense we started hesitating. We’ve got some things to take care of but we’ll be ready for district on Tuesday.”

For Portales, Gomez hopes this comeback win will be the turning point in a season that’s had more downs than ups.

“This is our fourth match playing five sets and our first set 5 win,” Gomez said. “The girls just did this so I hope they can build confidence off it. If we can play with some consistency and not the up-and-down roller coaster we’ve been on, we can compete with anybody.”

Texico returns home and will host Santa Rosa to begin District 5-3A play. Portales will host Artesia in one of the final non-district matches of the season. Both games take place Tuesday.