Three years, three playoff appearances. Go ahead and add one district title to a short but already stacked resume.
Cool, calm and collected, the Chaparral Lady Bobcats added a piece of history to their third-year program ledger Friday night, topping Lake Belton 25-23, 25-13, 20-25, 25-8 to remain unbeaten in District 16-5A and secure their first league championship.
Alondra Rosario’s dig, to Aryanna Gonzalez’s assist, to Mikayla Gray’s kill sealed it, and the Lady Bobcats cleared the sideline to jump for joy as a group, celebrating three-year’s worth of work that emphatically produced a gold ball prize.
“Over the course of these past three years, we have just put our blood, sweat and tears into this,” said Gray, a senior who had 13 kills, 12 assists, 15 digs and three aces against the Lady Broncos. “It’s been a program-wide collaboration –– freshmen, JV, varsity, all of our coaching staff and trainers. We just put in the work every day. It’s just been an all-out effort across the board.”
Head coach Sarah Neal tried to hold back the tears. A few escaped and the best the third-year coach could do was quickly wipe them away as she congratulated her players postgame.
Bailey Thompson added seven kills, Jeish Reyes had six and Kemani Washington five. Rosario posted 21 digs, Mikayla Cromwell 16 digs, and Reyes 18 digs for the Lady Bobcats, who swept the season series from the defending district-titleholding Lady Broncos. Chaparral won the first encounter in five sets.
“Not very often do you get to build a program from the bottom up. For three years, these girls have worked. We’ve been hungry. We’ve worked in the offseason. We worked in the summer,” Neal said. “We spent a lot of time focusing, to build for this moment right here. This is huge and I could not be more proud of them.”
After a back-and-forth opening set that went Chaparral’s way, the Lady Bobcats took control of Game 2 early and cruised to an all-important 2-0 match lead.
The Lady Broncos kept the Lady Bobcats at bay in Game 3, shaking off a rally by the home team that dissolved a seven-point advantage by scoring eight of the set’s last 11 points.
The fourth set, though, was all Chaparral. The Lady Bobcats closed the deal with an 11-0 run that included two kills from Thompson and Gray, and three blocks by Washington.
“I told the girls tonight, you know they’re not going to hand this over. Jumping out two sets in the beginning, it gave us the right amount of momentum,” Neal said. “We talked going into that game. I said, ‘We need this set and you know you need this set. Do what you know you need to do.’”
The Lady Bobcats did just that, then celebrated accordingly.
“Our program has worked so hard for this win and I feel like we just came together and played well,” Washington said. “This is just the reward of a lot of hard work.”
Chaparral closes the regular season at Ellison on Tuesday, Oct. 29. The Class 5A playoffs begin Nov. 4-5.
View more photos on the KISD Communications Flickr page: https://www.flickr.com/photos/killeenisd/albums/72177720321490616
