Sure, District 25-2A’s top seed in the Class 2A volleyball playoffs was a stake. But more than anything, Tuesday night’s match between No. 5 Rogers and No. 13 Salado was a chance to work out those pre-playoff jitters and, of course, face a very familiar opponent.
Rogers outlasted Salado 22-25, 25-12, 25-21, 13-25, 15-10 in a hotly-contested 25-2A playoff match at Mary Hardin-Baylor’s Mayborn Campus Center. Rogers’ win gives the Lady Eagles the district’s top playoff spot.
Rogers (36-2), which earned first-round bye, faces Johnson City LBJ or Geronimo Navarro in the area round.
Salado (32-5) opens postseason play Tuesday against No. 25 Weimar in a bi-district match at 7 p.m. in Elgin. If the Lady Eagles win, they’ll face No. 12 Poth, the three-time defending Class 2A state champion, in the area round.
After being swept by Salado earlier this month for just its second loss of the season, Rogers wasn’t focused on revenge. The victorious Lady Eagles simply treated Tuesday night as a chance to test themselves one last time.
“You want these kind of matches,” Rogers coach Pam Lomas said. “We knew it’d be a good one.”
The first game unfolded about as expected, with the familiar opponents trading leads in their fourth meeting of the season. Salado took the lead for good at 19-18 after an attack error and closed it out with kills by Danielle Hazzard and Hadley Joiner.
In the second game, Rogers turned a 5-5 tie into a two-point advantage after a kill and a block by Cayleigh Drake. Rogers cruised from that point and led by as many as 12 as Dana Schaffner (24 kills), Nancy Macha (14 kills) and Drake (12 kills) controlled things at the net.
Rogers controlled the third game and led 22-12 late before Salado started its comeback. A kill by Joiner, who finished with 10, cut the deficit to 23-15 and Salado used four straight errors to trim the margin to four. But Rogers got kills from Nicholyn Carter-Maddux and Schaffner to close out the win.
Needing a win to extend the match, Salado controlled the fourth game most of the way, led by nine Hazzard kills. Hazzard (15 kills) closed out the 25-13 win with a kill to force the fifth game.
Macha and Carter-Maddux controlled things for Rogers in fifth game, scoring six of the Lady Eagles’ 15 points to seal the win.
Salado coach Bree Holz-Gonzalez admitted the environment and playing in an unfamiliar gym might have gotten to her team.
“We just didn’t execute tonight,” she said. “I think playing kind of tight had a lot to do with it. We talked a lot about just relaxing and playing.
“We needed to play either way and who better to go against than one of the top-ranked teams in the state.”
