The Permian girls volleyball team defeated El Paso Montwood, 24-26, 25-12, 25-21, 25-15, in a Class 6A bi-district playoff match Tuesday at the Permian Fieldhouse.
Jade Workman had a match-high 26 kills to lead the Lady Panthers, who will face Southlake Carroll in the area round with the date and time still to be determined.
The Dragons (20-20) upset Weatherford (34-10) in five sets Tuesday.
“We lost to a pretty good Permian team,” Rams coach Fabian Martinez said. “They are a solid team.”
The Lady Panthers struggled out the gate as they trailed 10-5 early in the first set.
“I think we just came in a little bit too confident,” Workman said.
Permian head coach Gillian Herrera believed the anxiety got to her players early.
“I think we got a little bit nervous that first set,” Herrera said.
The Lady Panthers (27-9) were able to regroup and dominated the following set.
If Workman was not delivering kill after kill, then her teammates were backing her up with digs, kills and blocks of their own in the second set.
The Lady Panthers went on a 6-0 run to extend the lead to 21-8 after a kill by Amry Quiroz – the largest lead for either team in the match to that point.
The third set reverted to the back-and-forth nature of the first set, as the two teams exchanged leads seven times, with no deficit larger than four points.
The Lady Panthers set the tempo to begin the fourth set, with four Workman kills in the first seven points, followed by three consecutive aces by Anahi Quiroz to open the lead to 10-2.
Quiroz finished with five kills, three service aces and 13 digs on the evening.
The home team never relented, winning the fourth set decisively.
“When you are able to get ahead early, you are able to apply that pressure,” Herrera said. “I felt that we served aggressively, and we capitalized on a couple of their errors and took the momentum and just kept pushing.”
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