Wildcats post fourth win over Carlsbad

CARLSBAD — The first three times this season the Clovis Wildcats and Carlsbad Cavegirls met on the volleyball court, Clovis came away the victor.

Playing the season series for the first time in Carlsbad on Tuesday, the results were the same with Clovis sweeping the Cavegirls, 25-21, 25-19, 25-20.

The teams met in the Zia Classic and Moriarty Tournaments in September with Clovis (6-11, 2-2 5A-4) coming away with a pair of 3-1 victories. In both district matches, Clovis swept Carlsbad.

“We’ve seen them a lot this season,” Clovis head coach Ruth Chavez said of Carlsbad. “And we’ll probably see them again in the district tournament.”

It was a frustrating match for the Cavegirls (5-13, 0-4) who are still looking for a first district win of the season. Carlsbad didn’t get blown out in any sets and throughout the match both teams seemed to feed off each other whenever a particularly long rally play was going on.

Clovis just came out ahead on most of those rallies.

“Throughout the whole game we had some good rallies,” Carlsbad’s Diamond Morrill said. “We just were the ones losing most of those rallies. We couldn’t put the ball down when we needed to. That was a big reason.”

Clovis’ win ended a three-match losing skid while Carlsbad’s losing streak is now at five matches.

“We’ve been working on (eliminating) our errors and trying to make better hits,” Chavez said. “I thought we passed the ball and served well tonight. That really changed the game for us and we had fewer errors this time. We still had more errors than I’d like but I felt like we won the serving and the passing games tonight.”

Morrill didn’t have any complaints about her team’s performance, simply citing that a lot of points just didn’t go her team’s way.

“They all worked hard and did their jobs tonight,” Morrill said. “It’s just us falling behind. In that third set we had trouble getting out of that rut at the beginning.

One sign of Carlsbad’s maturity came in the third set. With Carlsbad trailing by a handful of points, anytime the Cavegirls would score off a spike or an ace, the team wouldn’t celebrate. They’d simply collect themselves and get ready for the next point. Morrill was pleased with that.

“They know they have a job to do,” Morrill said. “Doing that job is the main focus. Yes, cheering can happen. But it’s good when they’re still focused in and just want to go back to the huddle and continue to go.”

Clovis closes out the regular season at home Tuesday against Roswell.