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November 3, 2009

First time for anything

Lady Bulldogs ready for playoffs to get under way

By Gene Schallenberg

When the New Waverly volleyball team steps into the gymnasium at Woodville High School, they know they’ll be embarking on some unfamiliar territory.

For the first time since 2005, the Lady Dogs are in the playoffs.

New Waverly, the third-place finisher out of District 21-2A, will take on the Hemphill Lady Hornets, District 22-2A’s second-place squad, in today’s Class 2A Region III bi-district match, which will be held at Woodville High School at 6:30 p.m.

The Lady Hornets, in just the third year of their volleyball program will be making their playoff debut.

While New Waverly isn’t necessarily new to the postseason, it’ll be a new experience for the Lady Bulldogs players.

“I’ve never been to playoffs before in anything,” junior Kayla Munoz said. “I’m super excited about going. We’ve all worked really hard this year for this.”

In what was essentially a warm-up game for the playoffs, the Lady Dogs squared off against Anderson-Shiro on Saturday in a tiebreaker match for second place in the district.

“I think it was a good game to help us prepare,” senior Mallory Eastland said. “They were a good team. It’s what we can expect to see in the playoffs. We couldn’t have had a better warm-up game because Anderson is the type of team you want to play against.”

While the Lady Bulldogs came out on the short end, they were able to learn what things needed to be improved upon before beginning their postseason.

“One of the things we have to do is not let balls hit the floor,” New Waverly head coach Stacy Hill said Monday afternoon. “We also can’t miss serves because Hemphill doesn’t miss serves. We did that a lot the other day. We also had a lot of mental errors. The girls have just got to stop thinking so much and just play.

“We have to make them beat us. We can’t make it easy for them.”

The Lady Bulldogs also have to try to protect from getting overly excited.

“Because it’s their first playoff game, there’s a risk of the girls being a little too excited,” Hill said. “That can come back and bite us because they’ll try to overcompensate and it’ll end up resulting in a lot of unforced errors. We just have to settle in. Even though we haven’t been, we have to act like we’ve been there before.”

But even though New Waverly is raring to go, the Lady Dogs insist nervousness won’t be a problem.

“We’re not nervous,’ Eastland added. “We kind of got all our nerves out the last game. It won’t be our first time playing in a big gym or playing with something at stake.”

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