DIGGING HOLES
Lady Badger rallies fall short after slow starts
By JEREMY HEATH Staff Writer

PHOTO BY GABE WOLF Lampasas' Shay Norris digs a Lake Travis attack in the Lady Badgers' 25-17, 25-13, 25- 16 home loss on Tuesday. The Lady Badgers will go after their first District 25-4A victory when they play host to Dripping Springs tonight at 5:30.

Slow starts doomed any upset hopes the Lady Badger volleyball players may have harbored when powerful Austin Lake Travis rolled into town on Tuesday.

LHS (8-14 overall, 0-5 in District 25-4A) fell behind in all three games of a 25-17, 25-13, 25-16 loss, the team's fourth straight after a 4-2 showing at the Waco Robinson Tournament on Sept. 6.

LHS is scheduled to play host to Dripping Springs tonight. The varsity and sub-varsity matches are set to start at 5:30 p.m. to accommodate homecoming.

"We just dig ourselves into a hole by making silly mistakes," LHS head coach Tracey Myers said.

"Then we play so well."

The Lady Badgers fell behind early in Game 1 before battling back to 18-14 and 19-15. Then Lake Travis took serve on a Lindsey Thompson kill, and Alex Genung served four consecutive points to put the game out of reach.

The Lady Badgers were just a tick off all night. Their positioning on service receptions and digs was close to where it needed to be but not quite where Myers wants it to be.

"It's our reaction time," Myers said. "We work on it and work on it and work on it, and it's getting better. It's just not there yet. We'll focus on it again this week. We'll just keep firing balls at them over and over until it improves."

The Lady Badgers opened Game 2 with a back-row kill from Davina Hurst, but Lake Travis scored 17 of the next 18 points to take a 17-2 lead.

The Lady Badgers then outscored Lake Travis 11- 8. Becca Hobbs had two kills during the stretch, a dink over the Lake Travis block to make it 18-5 and an attack through the block to make it 24-12. Allie Spivey had an ace during the rally, and Shay Norris added a kill.

Spivey finished with a team-high 11 assists, and Erin Laney added five. The Lady Badgers had 16 team kills and three aces.

Game 3 was more of the same with Lake Travis taking 5-1, 15-6 and 20-11 leads before the Lady Badgers got on track. Spivey had two kills in Game 3 while Kayli Arizpe, Laney and Hobbs had one apiece.

"I'm proud of these girls because I see the improvement," Myers said.

"Every ball game we keep improving and our communication is getting better. Now, we've just got to work on not dwelling on our mistakes. We're going to make some mistakes, but we've got to learn to just move on."

Lake Travis JV sweeps LHS: The Lake Travis junior varsity teams defeated the LHS Blue team 26-24, 25-23 and the LHS White team 25-3, 25-8 on Tuesday night.

For the Blue, Chasity Kettinger had seven kills, and Emily McCullough had five digs. For the White, Laura Leavell had four blocks, and Kirby Kennedy had eight digs.

Home Match Tonight

The LHS volleyball team is

scheduled to play host to Dripping Springs at 5:30 tonight.