By Max Thompson

Talk about the wrong ending to a great story.

Lake Travis (37-10) fought until the bitter end, but lost its state semifinal match to Highland Park Thursday night at Strahan Coliseum in San Marcos, 20-25, 25-15, 20-25, 26-24 and 17-15.

The Lady Cavaliers were making just their second state appearance in team history, and just the first at the 4A level, and while they didn’t make it to the state finals, they certainly didn’t go down without a fight.

But it didn’t quite start the way they had hoped, either.

The Lady Scots came out firing to open the match, holding a steady lead throughout before finishing strong at 25-20.

“I think we started off the match tentative, and our serve receive showed we were a little tight.” Lake Travis head coach Julie Green said. “And we ended up paying for it. We weren’t able to run our offense as well as we would have liked.”

But a rally late in game one helped give Lake Travis some momentum in game two, and they rolled to a dominating 25-15 win. It was exactly what needed to happen.

“I was so proud of the girls when they came back in game two. They let that first game go, and came out with a game plan,” Green said. “We held their rotations, and I felt like in the games we won, we did that really well. We avoided having to face [Katherine] Culwell a lot of the time.”

Culwell – an Auburn commit – made her presence felt throughout the match, and as it would turn out, had the final say down the stretch. But the Lady Cavs were successful in keeping her effectiveness to a minimum at crucial moments in the match. When she was on, she was tough to stop, and that’s exactly how the Lady Scots fought their way to the 25-20 win in the third game.

Lake Travis has been able to handle teams with one big player all season, including Hutto’s Jessica O’Shoney and Steele’s McKenzie Adams, both of which are middle blockers. Culwell is an outside hitter that can jump out of the gym.

“Teams that have a middle, it’s not as easy to get the ball to a middle. We can take them out of the game in lots of ways,” Green said. “But outside hitters are different. No matter where you are on the court, you can feed your outside. Take nothing away from her, she’s a great player and she came through for her team.”

Not before Lake Travis won a thrilling fourth game that was tied 24-24 by Highland Park, which then squandered the opportunity with a tip that sailed wide out and followed with a hit into the net, forcing a game five.

The lead changed hands four times in the game, and Lake Travis was able to keep Culwell on the back row for much of the game until the Lady Scots tied it at 13-13.

“I felt like we got an unlucky roll in the final game at 13-13, and she came back to the front row,” Green said. “There was really not a whole lot we could do about it when she was on the front row.”

Lake Travis outside hitter Elissa Underwood kept her team in it with big kills to tie the game at 14-14 and 15-15, the first of which came after a huge rally that sent an already rabid crowd into a frenzy.

“I think there are points in a game that sometimes you are just lucky or unlucky. But I knew we were in it and that girls hadn’t shut down mentally at any point,” Green said. “They were in it the whole time, and no matter what we went through, they stepped up.”

The Lady Scots answered with a kill of their own from Culwell, followed by another impossible Lake Travis dig that fell behind the back row away from the outstretched arms of three different Lady Cavaliers. The ball hit the floor, and the gym was separated by two very different emotions.
On one side there was elation and relief, and on the other, disappointment and shock.

But neither side had anything left.

The tears came for Lake Travis, but they weren’t the tears of devastation that one might expect. As Green said afterward, it was tough to be devastated when there wasn’t an ounce of emotion or energy left.

“I think there was a point in the season at the regional tournament where I decided no matter what we did, we couldn’t feel bad about the effort we put forth,” she said. “To get to this point, to lose at the state tournament, it’s not that it’s not emotional, it’s just I couldn’t ask for any more from my team. They gave it everything.”

That doesn’t mean there wasn’t a fair amount of disappointment.

“Does it mean I’m going to be able to watch the title game and not wish it was my kids playing?” Green said. “No, but this team has set the bar very high. We know how great it is to get here, and we know how much it hurts to lose. The expectation level has changed.”

Senior libero Meg Reesing agreed.

“I don’t think I regret anything. I know we gave our best effort, and this season has been amazing,” she said. “I think it makes it easier to know we fought for those last points. If we had lost 15-10, that would have been such a hard loss to take. Knowing we fought for every point, with Elissa [Underwood] keeping us in it with amazing back-to-back kills, that makes it not as hard to take.”

Underwood led Lake Travis in kills with 16, followed by Heather Leyva with 13, Morgan Hendrix with seven, Anna Massey with six, and Taylor Smith and Amy Neal with five.

Lani Durio chipped in 23 assists to go with Mackenzie Smith’s 19, and Meredith Murphy had 17 digs to go with Reesing’s 15. Neal and Mackenzie Smith each had two aces, and Leyva had 3.5 blocks to go with Henrix’s two blocks.

Leyva also made the state tournament team as the lone Lake Travis selection, and her and Murphy were named to the 4A all-state team, as well as the academic all-state team.