Portales splits matches, finishes third in district

PORTALES — Don’t blame the Portales High volleyball team if it's feeling a little bit of deja vu in this week’s District 4-4A tournament.

The Rams, coming off a Tuesday home match with Lovington and a Thursday matchup at Artesia, enter the tournament with a Tuesday home match against Lovington and potentially a Thursday semifinal against Artesia — depending on how the next few days develop.

Portales (7-13) finished third in 4-4A following their sweep over Lovington and their three-set loss against the Bulldogs. Artesia (15-4) and Goddard both finished 5-1 in district play and split their head-to-head, so they’re heading to a neutral-site tiebreaker match Monday in Hagerman.

Portales hosts Lovington (7-13, 0-6) in a 6 p.m. Tuesday tournament opener. The winner faces the Artesia-Goddard loser Thursday, while Monday’s winner will host the district championship on Saturday.

Ram coach Charity Gomez is hoping Portales can put together a good showing in the district tournament.

“We just need to get more consistent as attackers, collectively,” Gomez said. “We’ll have a couple of girls who are on and a couple of girls who are off. If we could be consistently on, that would help.”

A district tournament title would equal an automatic berth into the state tournament, and the Rams are otherwise hard-pressed to make the 12-team field.

There are 18 teams with more victories than Portales. and the Rams’ victories are against teams (Ruidoso, Moriarty, Lovington, Clovis) that all finished below .500 in their respective districts.

Against Lovington (25-22, 25-15, 25-13) — Seniors Taylee Rippee and Abby Brown had 18 and 10 kills, respectively, on senior night, while Mattison Blakey had 20 assists, 13 digs and eight of Portales’ 11 service aces.

“We’re focused, everyone did a good job versus Lovington,” Gomez said. “It was just a good team effort. We defended well, we passed the ball really well.”

Against Artesia (14-25, 18-25, 21-25) — Artesia’s Paityn Houghtaling led the way with 10 kills, five blocks and a pair of service aces.

“They don’t error,” Gomez said of the Bulldogs. “They’re very good at keeping the ball in play. We had a hard time defending the middle. Once it got past our block, we had a difficult time defending it. We had a string of points get away from us, and I feel like we were always climbing back into the match. We never gave up, and our scores were respectable.”

Rippee had 10 kills to match Houghtaling, and Aaliyah Austin had 12 digs to lead Portales.