Make it 13 in a row — and there’s nothing unlucky about these Elkettes.
The Pojoaque Valley High School volleyball team won its 13th consecutive match as of Monday after taking down district foe Moriarty Oct. 11 inside the Ben Lujan Gymnasium by a score of 3-1 (25-14, 23-25, 25-19, 25-14).
Pojoaque traveled to play the Los Alamos High School Lady Hilltoppers Tuesday, but those results were not available by press time.
One theme that has followed the Elkettes (14-1) is their ability to serve among the best teams in the state, as they committed just three serving errors on 93 total serves against the Lady Pintos.
“I’m getting my servers in every spot too,” Pojoaque head coach Joe Rodriguez said. “It’s not like one position is weak. We have servers in every spot and we’re getting easy points.”
The Elkettes recorded six aces and their ability to continually pressure Moriarty forced the Lady Pintos into out of system play and self-inflicted errors for a majority of the four-set match.
Pojoaque was led by a balanced offensive attack as Espy Torres and Ashten Martinez each had nine kills and Camille Cordova was right behind with eight of her own. Setter Adrianna Quintana set up the three hitters all night with 29 of the team’s 30 assists.
“We’re not a one-hitter, two- hitter, three-hitter kind of team,” Rodriguez said. “Collectively as a team we were great.”
Pojoaque looked like their normal selves after starting the first few rallies in the first set with several free balls on offense, but then picked up the pace to cruise to a 25-14 victory after an 8-1 run helped them separate to an 8-2 lead early.
Torres got going with a couple kills in one-on-two situations versus the Moriarty block that committed several errors throughout the match.
Set two was a different story, and the Lady Pintos proved the depth that District 2-4A provides.
“I hate revisiting those games because they will knock a couple years off my life,” Rodriguez said about the second set loss.
It was almost as if Rodriguez could already sense the change in momentum early when Pojoaque fell down 4-2 as he threw down his binder — used to hide his set calls — to the floor.
Unlike the first set, the second was tightly contested throughout, but Pojoaque still found themselves up two with a 23-21 advantage after Moriarty started to pick up balls and transition to in-system play on offense.
That’s when the Lady Pintos really began to attack strong as libero Alyssa Rodriguez — who was efficient otherwise with a team-leading 26 digs — was unable to defend three huge attack attempts in the last four scored points by the Lady Pintos off some big swings.
The Lady Pintos thought they had settled in for a long night, but the Elkettes had only gone five sets in one match all season (Oct. 2 versus Española Valley) and they planned to keep it that way.
Set three and four both featured large scoring runs, including a 10-0 run in the fourth that put Pojoaque ahead 19-9 and on their way to victory. Coach Rodriguez was quick to call a timeout when Moriarty made the score 20-12.
Pojoaque came back focused and Martinez helped seal the match with a kill after a long rally and a tip shot that landed in the wide-open middle for the set point.
“Just our energy (changed),” Martinez said about the difference in play from set two onward. “We needed to bring out our energy more and pick it up on the bench. Our defense was dominating this game and then our outside hitter Espy, she’s been doing really well.”
Their ability to quickly regain control of matches after dropping a set is what has impressed coach Rodriguez during the win streak.
“That’s how they’ve been playing all year,” he said. “They’re always coming back and winning the next games, so they’re doing really well. We got two games on the road next week during Homecoming week. At Los Alamos and Española and that will really show where we are at.”
Next up for the Elkettes will be that key District road game at Española 6 p.m., Thursday.