Texans dig pink, beat Fredericksburg

Behind 17 kills from Paige Crawford, the Wimberley Texan volleyball team was able to takedown rival Fredericksburg in a thrilling 3-1 victory in front of a huge crowd, clad in pink, in Texan Gym on Friday night.

With the win, the Texans stay unbeaten in district play and improve their overall record to 22-7. Both the team and the crowd wore pink in support of breast cancer awareness.

Being a 4x district champion has put a huge target on the Texans back this season and with Fredericksburg being such a big rival, the target seemed to grow.

“It feels like everyone plays their best game when they play Wimberley,” Head Volleyball Coach Stephanie Barthels said. “It’s no different when Fredericksburg came to town… We kept our intensity up even though they (Fredericksburg) were making very good plays against us and came back really strong.”

Despite cruising in the first with a 25-18 victory, the Texans were in a tough battle through the second, third and fourth sets with neither team up more than a five point advantage.

In the second set, the Texans were up 19-14 before the Billies made a 6-3 run to close the gap down to 22-20.

Despite the Texans being at set point at 24-21, the Billies stormed back to tie the game up at 24-24.

After a furious battle, Wimberley was able to pull out the second set victory with a 27-25 win.

The third set saw the Texans once again take a decent lead over Fredericksburg at 15-10, but another furious rally by the Billies had tied the game up 20-20.

Wimberley was able to push the lead out to 23-22 but Fredericksburg was able to score three straight points to take the third set at 25-23.

With momentum on their side, Fredericksburg took a commanding lead at 17-13.

But as Barthels explained, pressure is nothing new to the Texans.

“We are always under pressure,” Barthels said. “We play really well when we are in pressure situations, and we practice a lot of drills that are pressure drills. When we are down, we’ve come back when it was 18-24, and we’ve won. So we are good in pressure situations, and we never freak out. We put in a girl like Payton (Helbig) who had sat through three sets. She comes in and does really well for us.”

“Those girls come in and know what to do,” Barthels continued. “Seasoned players can do that for us, and we train our girls really hard and that shows.”

The Texans stormed back from the deficit and went on a 8-4 run to tie the game up at 21-21.

From there, the Texans and Billies went back and forth with neither team giving up more than a two point advantage while going past the 25 point mark.

Despite trailing 26-27, the Texans outscored Fredericksburg 3-0 to take home the 29-27 victory.

Leading the team in kills was Paige Crawford with 17 followed by Layla Dubuisson with 16.

Cameren Davis led the team in both aces and blocks with four and three apiece while Ellie Marko led the team in assists with 24.

Emily Thames rounded up the stat count by leading the team in digs with 21.

The Texans are back at it again this week as they go on the road to Davenport to battle the Hounds before hosting Boerne on Friday night.