The Pahrump Valley High School volleyball team held on to beat Tech in a close game on Tuesday night, winning their first regional playoff game three sets to two, 25-23, 25-22, 23-25, 17-25 and 15-12.
The Lady Trojans (15-15 overall, 10-0 Sunset League) won the first two sets and had the Roadrunners (14-18, 6-6 Sunrise League) on the ropes. All they needed to do was win the third set and they would advance to the next round. But that didn’t happen. To the surprise of the fans, the team dropped two hard-fought sets in a row.
Tech just wouldn’t fold and die.
In the third set, Pahrump never trailed by more than two to three points. At the end, they started to fall behind. During the final points each team traded serving, along with the lead and finally, Tech went ahead by two points for the win.
Set four was more of the same.
In the fourth set, it appeared the Trojans got winded.
Senior outside hitter Angel Gibson noticed this too.
“I noticed we started to get tired and started to lose momentum,” Gibson said. “Towards the end we started to work more as a team and gained more momentum and we came back.”
After the second straight loss, Pahrump had to win the last set or their playoff run would end. To do that they had to regroup as a team. Trojans head coach Jill Harris said they did that in the last set.
“They’ve got heart,” Harris said. “They are not going to quit. They work hard. My girls are not quitters and they hang in there. We will get after it.”
The Trojans will resume the regional playoffs against Boulder City (24-15, 10-2). The game was played on Thursday.
“I think we will play smoother against them,” Harris said.
“We need to win,” Gibson said. “We need more talking as a team and more enthusiasm.”
Contact sports editor Vern Hee at vhee@pvtimes.com