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Volleyball: Familiar Faces: Plano tops Marcus, former coach Cron
By Justin Thomas, jthomas@starlocalnews.com
FLOWER MOUND - Marcus head coach Jennifer Cron wanted to see her team gain momentum Tuesday as they prepare to open District 5-5A competition Friday against Denton Ryan.
A win against her former squad would have made it that much sweeter.
Unfortunately for Marcus, Plano Senior was having none of it.
"We really talked this morning about using tonight's match to get geared up for district," said Teri Minnis, Plano head coach. "To really work on the things we needed to work on. It was more of the mental side of the game than anything physical that we did tonight."
Marcus entered with similar goals, and even though it came up short on the scoreboard, Cron - who enjoyed a little playful banter with her former pupils both during and after the match - still found positives.
"It was a little odd going against them," she said. "I know they have a good team and I have a good relationship with a lot of the girls on the team. But I'm here now and this is my team and I wasn't really focused on that too much. I just wanted to see if we could stay consistent after playing a good match last Friday against (Plano) West. I didn't see that as much as I would have liked. We were a little up-and-down. But we did some things well and hopefully we can pick it back up Friday."
The streaky play was on display early as Plano used a 10-0 spurt in Game 1 to push a 13-11 advantage to 23-11 and gain control.
As was the case much of the night, juniors Natalie Fazio and Kiley Long were at the forefront of the attack, contributing two kills apiece during the stretch.
"Kylie has been playing great for us and it continued tonight," Minnis said. "And the same goes for Natalie Fazio; she played well again, too."
Marcus was unfazed by the Game 1 loss, however, racing out to a 15-11 lead in Game 2 behind four kills from Regan McGuire.
The Lady Marauders actually led, 23-21, late in the set but the Lady Wildcats pulled even at 23-23. The teams then traded points, and Marcus appeared to side-out when trailing, 26-25. However, after the Lady Marauders looked to have won the point, the officials convened and ruled the point in favor of Plano because of a positional error giving the Lady Wildcats a 27-25 win and commanding 2-0 lead.
Marcus secured an early margin in Game 3 as well.
The Lady Marauders led by as many as four points and by three points on three different occasions en route to a 16-13 margin. But that's when Long took over, scoring kills on five of the next seven points as the Lady Wildcats stormed back to take a 17-16 lead and force a Marcus timeout.
The Lady Marauders could never get back on track, finally succumbing on consecutive errors after a McGuire block-kill had made the score 23-22.
"We didn't play our best, but we did some good things," Cron said. "That's a good team and we're going to have a lot of matches against similar quality opponents in district."
With another win on their ledger, this one over their former coach, the Lady Wildcats open district at 7 p.m. Friday when hosting McKinney.
"This was about us being prepared to play in big matches and tonight was a big match," Minnis said. "Marcus had been playing well and just beat Plano West Friday. And coach Cron is over here at Marcus now, so the kids were excited to get to play her. There was a lot of emotion involved so we had to work on containing that and we did."
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