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Melrose, Elida to meet again

Elida will host district championship 3 p.m. Friday

ELIDA — For the eighth straight year, the Elida Tigers will be playing for a district championship.

The seven-time defending small-school champs will host Melrose Friday after taking down Floyd 25-16, 25-14, 25-14 Wednesday night.

Melrose defeated Grady in four sets in Wednesday's other semifinal.

"We had some really good plays, we had some not so really good plays," Elida coach Darrell Chenault said of Wednesday's game. "We gotta keep working on keeping our mind in the game, and keeping our mind on what the job is at the time.

"But overall, it's a big win for us — that little team (Floyd), they're getting better and better, and they play really good defense. They keep a lot of stuff alive that we assume is going down a lot of times. We've just gotta keep working hard every day."

The Tigers (20-2) got off to a quick start in the first set, going ahead, 9-2. Floyd (10-10), however, hung around and closed the gap to three points, but ultimately, Elida was able to go into cruise control the rest of the set.

The second set appeared to be another Elida runaway, but the scrappy Broncos rallied to tie it at 12, before the Tigers ended the set on a 13-2 run. The third set, meanwhile, was another competitive set, as Floyd tied it up on three separate occasions, but in the end, came up short — once again.

"Obviously it wasn't our best match, but we tried some new things," Floyd coach Dawn Kuchta said. "We tried to manipulate our serve-receive and move girls and shift them into different spots. (We were) hoping that was what we needed, and I just think the changes had an effect on them."

For Kuchta and company, they finish fourth in their district, putting their playoff hopes up in the air. However, despite the uncertainty of playing another game or not, Kuchta is proud of her girls, and especially, the progress they've made from Day 1.

"I was talking to my girls and I just said, 'You know, we're young.' We're inexperienced and we talked about some of them not knowing where they need to go," Kuchta said. "That'll come in time (along with) the aggressive play and not being afraid to make mistakes.

"From Day 1 to now, it's just amazing how much we've grown. I'm proud of them if we make it to state or not. I know if we make it to state, we'll be fine. We're ready and we can do it."

It should be a tough battle, with the teams playing three times already this season. They split the season series, with Melrose handing Elida its first in-class defeat in eight seasons, and the Tigers won the tiebreaker match last week.

As for the eighth-straight district championship appearance, it's something that Chenault certainly does not take lightly.

"Well, you can't take it for granted. Because, the big thing you gotta understand in all of this is that you have new girls every year," Chenault explained. "There's a new set of seniors, there's a new set of freshmen coming up. That more than anything keeps the freshness to it. It never gets old, but that's just because you got new girls coming up every day."

Melrose 3, Grady 1 — Brette DeVaney and Nataley Mondragon each had 15 kills as the Buffaloes rallied after falling in the first game to the third-seeded Bronchos.

"They responded with a lot of focus," Melrose coach Casey Jackson said. "They weren't happy with their performance in that first set, and really came out swinging in the second. I'm pleased with how we played tonight; we're on a good path."

Eldorado 3, Clovis 0 — The Wildcats had to make a quick turnaround following Tuesday's 3-1 win over Santa Fe, and Eldorado wasn't a gracious host.

The Eagles (14-6) move on to face second-seeded La Cueva on Friday. Top-seeded Sandia hosts the winner the next evening.

Clovis (11-10) figures it has a good shot to make the 12-team Class 6A field, despite finishing fourth in the regular season and the district tournament. The Wildcats are ranked No. 10 in the New Mexico Overtime Sports Center weekly poll. Of the Wildcats' 10 losses this season, seven of them came to ranked teams in their district — twice each to No. 1 La Cueva and No. 3 Sandia and three to No. 7 Eldorado.