Early showdown

Without much fanfare, the biggest early season volleyball match took place Thursday as two of the top teams in Acadiana battled at New Iberia Senior High.

The host NISH Lady Jackets, a perennial Division I playoff participant, and St. Thomas More Lady Cougars, another perennial playoff participant, went toe-to-toe in a match that could set the tone for both teams for the rest of the season and may even have given fans an early preview of the playoffs that start in November.

NISH trailed two games to one with the match on the line, but rallied to take two straight games and beat the Lady Cougars 3-2 (16-25, 25-16, 11-25, 25-17, 15-9) in a match that was not quite a classic, but gave the fans of both teams more than their money’s worth.

“Definitely a big win. Huge, huge,” said NISH coach Ron Hebert, whose Lady Jackets improved to 5-0 overall with the win and gave the Lady Cougars (3-1) their first loss of the season.

“It was great competition here today. Another newspapar called me last night to say that this was a battle of 1 and 2 right here. I used that as motivation for the kids and if you can’t get pumped up for that, to be No. 1 in the area and they pulled it off.”

On the other side of the court, STM coach Julie Dawson was obviously disappointed with the loss but still found out what her team was made of.

“It’s early in the season and we haven’t played many matches but I’m real proud of the way my girls came out and fought,” said Dawson. “It was a great atmosphere, a great high school volleyball game.

“You have to give New Iberia all the credit, they came out here to beat us and they did their job. They had less errors than we did.”

Playing before a standing room only crowd at the NISH girls’ gym, the Lady Jackets stumbled out of the gate but kept finding a way to come back and not let the contest get out of hand.

NISH dropped the first game 16-25 but reversed the score to win the second game 25-16, setting up a pivotal third game.

Somewhere between the second and third games, the Lady Jackets lost some focus and concentration as STM blew out to an early lead and cruised to a 25-11 win.

“We had ups and downs,” said Hebert. “If you look at the first and second games, it was a carbon copy. Each team was up 16-14 and the game ended 25-16.

“Then we go and lose our mind in the third game.”

It may have been a case of too much success for the Lady Jackets.

“I think that we got satisfied,” said Hebert. “We beat them that one game and I think we relaxed. You saw a difference in the attitude. We started to cut up and la la la la la.

“We lose the game and then it was like ‘Oh boy.’”

NISH led 2-0 in the fourth game only to see STM come back to take a 5-3 lead. Somewhere along the way, the Lady Jackets found what had been missing in the third game and stormed to take a 16-10 lead and rolled to a 25-17 win to set up the fifth and deciding game.

“It was going our way,” said Dawson. “But that’s the game of volleyball, it’s all about momentum. You have it one game and lose it the next. It’s all about mental toughness at this point of the season and we had a lot of mental errors.”

“She gave us some errors and we gave them some errors in the that game,” said Hebert. “All I said to them before the third game was you have to do this. Do you want to be No. 1 or No. 2?

“I used it as motivation. I told them that they were satisfied in that third game. You could tell how it ended with no communication. It was like we’ll get them in the next game. Well we did.”

In the final game, STM went out to a 2-0 lead but NISH rallied to take a 7-4 lead. In fact, three times in the final game the Lady Jackets led by three points only to see the Lady Cougars come back. But instead of faltering, it seemed the spur the team on and New Iberia eventually won by six points, 15-9.

“We were down 0-2 on errors and I said, ‘That’s it, we need to get it back or take an error from them,’” said Hebert. “We got one back, then another one back and then we took the lead. We had way more intensity in the fifth game than we’ve ever had.

“We had to do it, it was on the line. You need that. You need to go five against a great team and to pull it off after coming from behind. This game had a little bit of everything that you need for the rest of the season.”

Shalicia Rochon, who had the game point kill for NISH, led the Lady J’s with 17 kills, five digs and two blocks; Jennifer Trahan had five kills, 15 digs and eight assists; Jasmin Fusilier also had five kills to go with five blocks; Brittany Dugas added 20 assists and 15 digs and Geraldlyn Broussard had 12 digs and four kills.

NISH returns to action Tuesday at Barbe.