The Sachse Lady Mustangs won six of nine matches at the Legends Invitational in Bryan, finishing 17th out of 56 teams in the three-day tournament.
Sachse closed the event on a four-match winning streak, beating Harker Heights 25-13, 25-20, sweeping Manvel 25-11 and topping Kingwood 25-23, 25-22 after a pool-play victory over Wylie Prep 25-23, 25-16. The Lady Mustangs opened pool play with a 25-22, 25-10 win over Cedar Creek and beat Hardin-Jefferson 25-19, 17-25, 25-22, Sachse News reported.
The three losses came against stiff competition. Victoria West took a three-set match 25-23, 26-28, 25-16. Stratford swept Sachse 25-13, 25-7. Klein Cain won 25-27, 25-12, 25-15.
Five players recorded more than 30 kills across the nine matches. Khloe Ellis led with 49, followed by Ella Smith (48), Jayla Butler (44), Natallie Rainey (38) and Fallin Whitmore (36).
The net play was just as productive. Rainey, a junior who wears No. 8, paced the team with 13 blocks. Amyah Davis added 11 and Butler chipped in 10.
Setter Sarah Naidoo ran the offense with 101 assists and 17 service aces.
The tournament came days after Sachse rolled past Mesquite 25-7, 25-19, 25-17 on Aug. 25.
Head coach Rikki Jones said after the Aug. 25 Mesquite win that the team needed to sharpen its ball control. "It's always ball control, serve-receive, so I need to make sure I have more personnel stepping up defensively and with serve-receive, and then offensively, we just need to improve our hitting percentage a little bit …" Jones said in an interview with Sachse News.
Jones struck a similar tone after Sachse's season-opening loss to Rockwall-Heath on Aug. 12. "We better get better, but we had a lot of young kids and some of them were nervous in their first game," she said at the time.
Sachse is scheduled to face Wylie on Sept. 18, according to the Wylie ISD athletics schedule.
