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Lady Highlanders cruise into gold bracket with undefeated pool play in Pearland invitational

By: Jason Halpert, WOL Sports
| Published 08/14/2014

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The Lady Highlanders volleyball win streak stands one short of fifty after their dominating, day one performance at the Pearland Invitational tournament Thursday afternoon. The Woodlands didn’t drop a set in beating their opponents 6-0 in the three contests. The scores were 25-13, 25-16 over Santa Fe; 25-10, 25-17 over Porter, and 25-10, 25-15 over El Paso Coronado.

After winning the tournament in 2013, the team knew repeating would be a daunting challenge. Factor in the video tribute about last year’s team before the tournament even began this morning, and they knew all 87 teams would be gunning for them.

“It’s a little stressful because we have a target on our back,” said senior Kendall Cook. “If they didn’t know about us from last year, they do now.”

Against Santa Fe, the Lady Highlanders looked like the more physical, aggressive team, and it showed. Leading the way was USC commit Rachel Reed with seven kills in the match, along with a team high 1.5 blocks, as well as an ace. Another Lady Highlander who had a strong game was junior outside hitter Bella Pinton, who had six kills herself, to go along with a team high two aces and eight digs in the win.

“The atmosphere is different down here,” said Pinton. “It’s different than what we’ve played, but we’re excited and hopeful to see the other strong teams in the tournament later.”

With only a few games and a few practices under their belt, this tournament will really test the Lady Highlanders and see where their skill level and team chemistry currently sits.

“We started off strong, but made some errors in the second game,” said head coach Leslie Madison. “It’s still getting there.”

The Lady Highlanders will start the playoff round tomorrow morning at 10am in the ‘gold bracket,’ which is the top level for the tournament. As the two seed they will wait and play the winner of the ‘gold play-in’ game between 34th seeded St. Agnes, and 31st seeded NB Canyon.

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