Wylie East freshman Tess Adamic, pictured in previous action, helped to lead the Lady Raiders to a 3-0 win over Lakeview Centennial on Tuesday afternoon. Photo by Oladipo Awowale / C&S Media
By David Wolman
GARLAND — Wylie East head volleyball coach Tasha Hallam is proud of how her Lady Raiders have overcome a 1-3 start in District 9-6A play and put themselves in a position to earn a playoff berth.
Now, she is hopeful that her team can finish the job.
The Lady Raiders took a big step toward achieving that goal Tuesday afternoon with a 3-0 road win (25-18, 25-16, 27-25) over Lakeview Centennial.
Wylie East (16-17 overall, 9-5 district) also got some help from Sachse. With Sachse posting a victory over Garland, also on Tuesday, Wylie East now is in control of its playoff destiny. If the Lady Raiders win each of their final two remaining games — Friday at the Williams Center against Naaman Forest and on Oct. 24 at Rowlett — they will clinch a playoff berth.
“I’m really proud of them,” Hallam said. “We’ve had a whole new crew from last year, and we lost one of our senior setters in the Garland game. We had to kind of revamp everything and become a whole new team again. They’ve done a really good job of figuring it out, coming together as a team and getting some fight about them, having to work for wins.”
Senior setter Jordan Turner, a Memphis commit who played a key role during last season’s run to the third round of the playoffs, suffered an injury last month against Garland. Hallam said she is unsure when or if Turner will return to the starting lineup. In Turner’s absence, the Lady Raiders have received outstanding play at the setter position from freshman Audrey Cravens and sophomore Norah Hicks, who is also an offensive threat.
After Wylie East took a 7-1 lead in the first set and held off a late surge by Lakeview Centennial to win it, Hicks helped set the tone for the second set — one in which the Lady Raiders hit the ball hard at times. Hicks buried a kill to forge a 4-4 tie. A few points later, she and junior Lexi Cooper teamed up on a block to give Wylie East an 8-5 lead.
The booming hits continued.
Junior Macy Barcelo rose in the air for a hitting attempt from the left side later in the second set for a kill, and a few points later, Hicks hit the ball diagonally for a kill to give Wylie East a commanding 16-10 lead.
“I love that we were aggressive and ready to get the ball down,” Hallam said. “We definitely took some big swings, and that was great to see.”
For as well as Wylie East played in the second set, the Lady Raiders lost their momentum to begin the third. Unforced errors forced Wylie East to dig itself out of a 6-0 deficit, prompting a timeout.
“I don’t think that we should have been down 6-0 to begin with, but we did a good job of resetting and fighting back,” Hallam said. “We decided then that we weren’t going to lose.”
Wylie East worked its way back into the match thanks to back-to-back kills by freshman Tess Adamic. The Lady Raiders fed off Adamic’s energy, but they didn’t make it easy on themselves.
Errors plagued both teams, which later put both on the cusp of winning the third set.
But when adversity hit the Lady Raiders, Hallam was proud of how her team responded.
After the Lady Patriots forced set point on a hitting error by Wylie East, the Lady Raiders battled back. They led 25-24 after a Hicks service ace, and three points later, she caught the Lady Patriots’ defense off guard with a slow-motion kill that clinched the three-set win for Wylie East.
“We’ve done a lot better at handling adversity,” Hallam said. “We believe that we can win, whereas at the beginning of the season, we didn’t know if we could win when adversity hit our way. Now it’s like, ‘No, no, no, we’re going to win.’ We’re going out there and taking care of business.”
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