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Lady Rattlers take fourth place in silver bracket

San Marcos Volleyball
Monday, August 27, 2018

Head coach Michelle Moreno took her team into a closed hallway, isolated from everything else.

The Lady Rattlers just dropped consecutive sets against Victoria West to lose 2-1 in the third place game of the silver bracket at the Ragin’ Rattler Tournament on Saturday. Moreno needed her players’ undivided attention.

“(I told them) we can’t be up and down,” Moreno said. “It seems like sometimes we’re playing harder than other times and all I expect is 100 percent all the time. Bottom line.”

Following San Marcos’ 3-2 win over Lockhart on Aug. 21, Moreno had stated she was worried about her team’s inconsistency. She noticed that her players typically started and finished strong during matches, but had issues grinding it out through the sets.

Moreno’s fears came to fruition on Saturday.

The Lady Rattlers seemed to be building momentum through their first match against Canyon Lake. They barely lost the first set, 25-22, then bounced back in the next two, winning the second, 25-20, and the third, 25-16. The team moved on to the championship side of the bracket, just as Moreno wanted.

“I thought we started off great,” Moreno said.“And then we just came out flat in that second game against Wimberley. We were flat.”

The Lady Texans had some extra motivation heading into the second round. They had lost 3-1 in San Marcos’ home opener on Aug. 7 and brought an higher level of energy in the rematch on Saturday. The Lady Rattlers weren’t prepared for it, and fell in two sets.

“I think (we had) just a lack of emotion,” assistant coach Meghan Nichols said. “Like, they were there, but they weren’t present. Their attitudes were just ‘OK, I’m here.’ It wasn’t like, ‘OK, let’s do this!’”

The loss to Wimberley pushed San Marcos into the third place game with Victoria West. At first, the team appeared to be bouncing back. The Lady Rattlers were aggressive on offense, and took the first set, 25-22.

The Lady Warriors fought back, though, causing San Marcos to unravel. The team trailed just 9-7 before Victoria West went on a 5-0 serving run. The Lady Rattlers struggled with their timing on passes and couldn’t seem to find any holes in the defense, dropping the second set 25-16.

The mistakes followed San Marcos into the third set. Back-to-back aces sealed the match for the Lady Warriors, 25-20. 

“Nothing to take away from those teams, but I think that we helped them out, too,” Moreno said. “Because we just made too many mistakes today because of our inconsistency.”

The Lady Rattlers took fourth place in the silver bracket of the Ragin’ Rattler Tournament and are now 14-12 on the season. They’ll take Tuesday off - the last time for the rest of the season -- before picking things back up on the road on Friday against McCallum at 6 p.m. Moreno said she expects her team to respond.

“And that’s what tournaments are for, is to work out all of those kinks and learn from our mistakes,” Moreno said. “And hopefully we have and have a strong start to district. But like I said, this far in - what have we played, (26) matches? We want to clean that stuff up by now. So, we’ve got another week of non-district matches and hopefully we get it together by then.”

San Marcos Record

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