After tough matches with Marcus and Flower Mound, the Cowgirls volleyball team took home its first win of District 6-6A play against Plano East, 3-1 (25-20, 25-12, 20-25, 25-17), on Tuesday in the CHS Arena.

“We had a game plan, we wanted to set up and play and our kids did really good, we responded,” Coppell coach Julie Price said. “They just hung in there, and they finished from ways that we didn’t finish in the last two matches.”

With Coppell taking the first two sets, the team reworked its rotation through the end of the second set and the start of the third set and changed the game up.

“The second set we started off a little bit slow and so [Price] switched up the rotation a little bit to finish that and usually we’re not good with making changes like that,” Coppell senior setter Mari Taira said. “The setters weren’t really connecting with the hitters and we were making a lot of dumb errors so that third set was just a lot of confusion.”

The Cowgirls lost the third set and recovered swiftly, returning to their previous style of play and taking back the game with an early lead that lasted the set.

“We went back to our original rotation and we made sure to mix up our offense. In the first two sets we scored a lot on this play called the slide[…] so the other team, Plano East, adjusted their defense to defend that and so the third set whenever we tried running the slide again it just wouldn’t work,” Taira said. “So we stopped doing that and we started running different things with the middle; pin hitters and stuff like that worked well.”

With the district first win of the season, the Cowgirls play Hebron in the CHS Arena at 6:30 p.m. on Friday night.

“Last year [Hebron was] a good team,” Taira said. “Our district is filled with strong teams so we don’t know what to expect but obviously it’s not going to be an easy game. We’re going to have to work hard to win.”

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