Tough going against tough foe for Trojans volleyball

There are easier ways to open a girls volleyball season than making a trip to Moapa Valley.

“It’s tough to come out against Moapa,” Pahrump Valley High School coach Jill Harris said. “I knew it would be. They’re a good team.”

And the Pirates looked the part of a good team Friday night, rolling in the first two sets and recording a 25-14, 25-12, 17-25, 25-15 victory over the Trojans.

On the positive side, the Trojans have closed the gap a bit on the Pirates.

“This was a heck of a lot better than the last time we played them,” Harris said, recalling the 2019 Class 3A Southern Region Tournament, when the Trojans took a 24-9 record into a first-round match against the Pirates and did little right in a 25-15, 25-11, 25-11 shellacking. “This was an improvement.”

In fact, much of the time, the teams looked fairly even between the serve and the point. But to Harris, that explained much of the issue for the Trojans.

“They served tougher than we did,” she said. “That was the difference, right there. We need to serve tougher at each other. Not just getting the ball over, but serving tough.”

Harris said the Trojans were not strong enough receiving serves, either, but their play during rallies made much of the match interesting. The first set was tied four times, the last at 14-14 when a Moapa Valley player was called for a carry. But it was all Pirates after that, as they scored the final 11 points of the set.

Things were no better early in the second set, as Moapa Valley raced to an 8-1 lead. That meant that over two sets, the Pirates won 19 of 20 points, which led Harris to call a timeout.

But while the onslaught slowed, it didn’t stop, and the Pirates built leads of 14-3 and 21-7 before settling for a 25-12 win and a 2-0 lead.

Leading the way for the Pirates was sophomore middle blocker Sydney Reese, who tormented the Trojans all night and finished with 11 kills. “I knew they had the big girl in the middle,” Harris said.

But if it looked as if the teams — there were no spectators in the Pirates’ gym — would be going home early, the Trojans had other ideas. The third set was a battle most of the way, with neither team getting ahead by more than two points until a Kate Daffer kill gave the Trojans a 14-11 edge.

The lead grew to 16-11 before the Pirates ran off three consecutive points — one on another service error and another on a kill attempt that sailed long — but a kill from Mahina Araujo stopped the brief run, and this time it was the Trojans closing strong. They outscored their hosts 9-3 down the stretch to win 25-17 and get back in the match.

“There were a lot of good things that we saw,” Harris said. “It was a decent effort, just some mental errors. Missed serves are mental errors.”

The Pirates seemed annoyed after losing the third set and promptly took a 9-3 lead in the fourth. Unable to get into any kind of a rhythm, the Trojans did not serve back-to-back points until they were trailing 18-10. But Reese put an end to any hope of a momentum swing, ending points with a block and a kill to put the Pirates up by 10. The teams essential traded points, with the Pirates capping the evening with a 25-15 win in the set.

Daffer finished with 8 kills to lead the Trojans, while Kiana Touchstone added 5. Tayla Wombaker finished with 20 assists.

The best player on the court against the Pirates was Kalea Whitney, Harris said.

“Kalea, my libero, played really well,” she said. “She really stepped it up and played tough defense all the way around. I was really pleased with how Kalea played.”

As for the overall result, while stressing she expected her team to serve more effectively, Harris was not unhappy the Trojans opened against a quality opponent.

“Moapa’s tough, and we knew they would be,” she said. “But I’d rather play a tough team, and we’ve got some toughies on the schedule.”

The Trojans will face SLAM Nevada in their home opener at 6 p.m. Friday before heading to Las Vegas for a Monday evening match with Faith Lutheran, which went 24-13 in 2019 and has finished first or second in its league 13 times in the past 17 seasons.