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Volleyball: Lady Dragons let two-game lead slip away
By Justin Thomas, jthomas@starlocalnews.com
With a 2-0 lead Friday in Glen Rose against Colleyville Heritage, including a dominant 25-11 victory in Game 2, all signs were pointing to Southlake Carroll's volleyball team continuing its deepest postseason run since moving into Class 5A and qualifying for the Region I Finals.
Instead, the Lady Panthers were able to overcome the hole and eliminate the Lady Dragons in five sets (19-25, 11-25, 25-21, 25-22, 15-12). The win comes one year after Colleyville's district mate Grapevine shockingly knocked out Carroll in the area round.
"I don't know if we just ran out of gas or what," said Arthur Stanfield, Carroll head coach. "But our level of play certainly dropped in the last three sets while Colleyville's improved. That combination of events just left us on the short end of three straight close sets. We just couldn't find a way to pull one out and now we're home for another year."
"The third set we kept fighting back to even but could never pull ahead," he said. "In the fourth set, when we got the early lead, I was thinking 'Here we go, we're going to be OK and win it' but then we made a few mistakes and they got back in it. It was a miss here, and then they had a ball hit the net and roll over. And we had a kid slip going for a ball. It wasn't the fault of anybody in particular and nobody really played poorly, it was just that collectively we made too many mistakes."
In the fifth set, the Lady Dragons trailed, 5-1, but stormed back to even the score, 8-8, before eventually falling short.
"In reality our offense is based on ball control," Stanfield said. "We didn't do that as well as we needed to in those last three sets. We weren't passing well and you can't do that against a big, talented team like Colleyville. It caused us to consistently get out of system and we couldn't score. At the same time, they were passing and receiving well. Maybe they were just serving tougher than we were."
The troubles in the passing game caused the Lady Dragons to hit just .200 for the match, including "barely" over .100 in the third and fourth sets.
"When we ball-controlled in the first two sets, Colleyville really struggled to score," Stanfield said. "We were steady and were able to extend rallies but that all changed after the first two sets.
"There wasn't any physical let down. We got a side out on the first point of the third set and then had a double-touch to give it right back to them. If we go up 2-0 or 3-0 instead, you never know, maybe they would have folded up. Instead we gave them life and we were in a dogfight."
While Carroll came up short, the loss to the Lady Panthers doesn't sting nearly as much as last year's defeat at the hands of Grapevine.
"We're bummed," Stanfield said. "But it's different. Last year just left a bitter taste in my mouth with the way we lost and how that match evolved. Of course you never want to lose, but Colleyville played great and is a good team. We just didn't get it done. You have to be able to finish and we weren't able to. But I feel 100 percent better than last year. I'll take that effort in a high-level game like that over what we did last year anytime."
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