SAN BENITO — In a non-district volleyball match that brought out a lot of determination from both teams, the San Benito Lady Greyhounds emerged as the victors.
Tuesday’s back-and-forth contest went five games with the Lady Greyhounds prevailing 13-25, 25-16, 25-18, 16-25, 15-1 on their home court against the Brownsville Veterans Memorial Lady Chargers.
Both teams went to the playoffs last season and each wants to make it to the postseason again in 2018. San Benito was the third-place team in District 32-6A, while Brownsville Veterans is the two-time District 32-5A champion.
“Veterans is a very good team and we just started very slow against them,” Lady Greyhounds coach Ruby Medina said. “I don’t really know why we were playing sluggish. Our passing game (early) was not to our usual standard.
“But a win is a win no matter how we get it, so I’m just happy that our girls didn’t give up knowing where we were at (so early) in the match,” Medina added. “It was a good win for us to come back like that.”
San Benito was up 2-1 in the match after three games, but the Lady Chargers fought out of four ties, the last being 10-10, to take the fourth set 25-16 and send the match to a deciding fifth game.
There were four deadlocks in the fifth game as well, the final one being 6-6, before the Lady Greyhounds went out in front for good, 7-6, when the Lady Chargers hit the ball out.
From there, San Benito built leads of four points four times and won the fifth game 15-11 when a Brownsville Veterans block carried out.
“What stood out to me about this match is that we need to get in better shape,” Lady Chargers coach Lisa Mares said. “I thought both teams were kind of struggling with the conditioning part of the match. It was a long match and it’s still early in the season (so both squads still have time to improve).
Unfortunately, we’re still not having the consistency that I want us to have, especially hitting-wise,” Mares added. “We’re looking better than when we first started the season though, so that’s a plus.
“We still don’t have a set lineup, so we’ll see who does the job. Matches like this one tonight are good for us.”
Pamela Sanchez and Frida Rangel each had 15 kills for the Lady Chargers. Mariana Tostado added nine kills. Also, Daniela Espinosa had 48 assists and libero Alex Parchmont had 27 digs.
For San Benito, Alysa Naranjo had 16 kills and two blocks, while Devany Castillo had eight kills and Zoe Betancourt had four kills and eight blocks. Ysabel Soria added seven kills and seven blocks. Sarah Garcia had 44 digs and Ariel Garcia had 36 assists.
