Volleyball: Thrice is nice: Carroll locks up consecutive district titles

For the third consecutive season, Southlake Carroll volleyball has claimed at least a share of its district title.

The Lady Dragons remained perfect in District 4-5A competition during the past week, picking up wins over Keller (25-17, 25-14, 15-25, 25-13) and Justin Northwest (25-22, 25-14, 25-17) and are one match away from completing a perfect run through district (Tuesday's results against Keller Central not available as of press time).

Carroll won the 6-5A title in 2011 and earned a share of the title in 2010 with Keller Central.

"We're really pleased to have won the district," said Arthur Stanfield, Carroll head coach. "We all have goals and one of ours was to go 14-0 in district and 42-0 in sets. We're one win away from going undefeated. Even though we lost a set, that happens, and I'm still happy. We graduated seven seniors last year, many of which were three-year players, and we lost a lot of experience but we remained pretty consistent for the most part.

"Another thing you look at is a set that you win 25-16 or better is considered a dominant set. I don't know the number, but it seems like we had an awful lot of sets where we were winning 25-15 or 25-13 or something."

In the win against Keller, which has locked up the no. 2 seed from the district, Carroll was paced by Taylor Gruenewald with 14 kills, while Maddie McCollough led in assists. Stanfield added that Audrey Alford also played very well.

"I was kind of hoping that we would get into a situation where we were playing in a tightly-contested set," Stanfield said. "And even though we lost a set, that never really happened. We just made a ton of mistakes in the set we lost and played very well in the others. In that third set, we got aced something like seven times. It was just a complete collapse in our serve return. But we regrouped and turned it around in the fourth set."

It was the first time Carroll had dropped a set since playing in the Texas Open in Allen in late August.

While Stanfield and the Lady Dragons didn't get into a dogfight against Keller, they found the competitive set they were looking for against Northwest.

"The first set was what I wanted to see," Stanfield said. "It was good volleyball and until the very end, nobody led by more than two points the whole set. We ran out of subs, had to play some of our front players on the back and it was nice to see the girls get involved and play well even though a lot of them were out of position."

Katie Martin led the team in kills, including eight terminations in the first set alone.

"She was outstanding," Stanfield said. "She even ended the set with an ace for us."

After the tight first set, Carroll stepped on the gas and pulled away.

The Lady Dragons closed the regular season Tuesday against Central and are slated to host Rockwall-Heath at 6:30 p.m. Friday in a warm-up match in preparation for next week's bi-district round playoff match, which will either be against North Crowley or Arlington Lamar at a time and place to be determined.

"We're ready to get going," Stanfield said. "We've played well and handled our injuries and now we need to finish well against Central and then stay in rhythm with the warm-up match."

Last season, when Carroll also cruised to a district title and set a program record for wins in a season, the Lady Dragons did not play a warm-up match between their district finale and the playoffs and were shocked in the second round by Grapevine.

"It's a crapshoot," Stanfield said. "When I was at Red Oak, we won state in 2002 and probably had our best team in 2003. But we played a warm-up match against Arlington on Halloween and lost our best player to an ACL injury. We ended up losing in the regional semifinals and I'm pretty confident we would have been back at state if that didn't happen.

"Last year, I thought with seven seniors and the consistency we had played with that we didn't really need the warm-up match, especially since we had just finished playing in a district with some tough teams like Coppell. Then we ended up losing way earlier than we expected. So if nothing else, you know the saying is 'the definition of insanity is doing the same thing and expecting different results.' So we're going to try something different and hope it works out."

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