No. 1 Las Cruces holds off No. 2 La Cueva at VolleyBash

RIO RANCHO — La Cueva’s performance Saturday afternoon against the undefeated Las Cruces Bulldawgs could be measured in small victories, if not an actual first-place trophy.

Class 5A’s second-ranked Bears, the Albuquerque metro volleyball champions, managed to do something nobody else had done against No. 1-ranked Las Cruces this season: they took a set off the two-time defending Class 5A state champions in an official match.

And La Cueva wasn’t all that far from extending the Bulldawgs to a fifth set in the championship match of the Rio Rancho VolleyBash at Cleveland High School.

Las Cruces (10-0) leaned into the right arm of Addison Massey to end the suspense.

The fearsome 6-foot-1 Kansas State commit, with Las Cruces trailing late in the fourth set, demonstrated her hitting prowess when it counted most, firing five consecutive kills for the Bulldawgs as they closed out La Cueva in the final.

The scores were 25-19, 25-14, 23-25, 25-21.

Massey was chosen the event’s most valuable player.

“We need matches like this,” veteran Las Cruces coach Keith Leupold said. “We knew going in that we would get a good match from La Cueva. They’re young, they’re very athletic and they’re talented.”

The Bulldawgs are older and talented, with nearly half a dozen seniors, while La Cueva doesn’t carry a 12th grader on the roster.

“It’s a very fun competition,” senior setter Sydney Pipkin said of the tournament, which features the most elite field of any event in the regular season. “Especially with La Cueva, they’re a very good team.”

The first two sets went as scripted for Las Cruces, which led the whole way, by various margins, in the opening set. Junior Ava Price, with the Bulldawgs leading 19-17, ripped off back-to-back kills and Las Cruces closed out the set moments later.

Las Cruces scored 13 of the first 17 points of the second set, and a handful of La Cueva hitting errors made it a runaway set for the Bulldawgs.

But La Cueva played a highly spirited third set, filled with tremendous blocking and defense, and Las Cruces got away from Massey for a majority of the set. Jula Utash delivered a series of kills in the middle of the set, Leah Jones picked it from there with four kills of her own, and freshman setter Charlie Ferguson was outstanding throughout, perhaps more so with her blocking than her setting.

Massey began heating up at the end of the set and helped the Bulldawgs get even at 23-all, but a Utash kill and a tip winner by Ferguson sent the match to a fourth set.

“In the third set,” observed Massey, “we definitely started to be more timid, and we let up on the serving line. In the fourth set, we (had) to go back to being aggressive.”

The Bulldawgs started quickly in the fourth, leading 8-3, but the Bears rallied, and tied the set at 14. The teams exchanged points for the next few minutes; with La Cueva leading 20-18, there was a hitting error on the Bears, followed by five kills by Massey, several of them of the cross-court variety — “that’s definitely one of my favorite shots,” she said — as La Cueva began to block her attempts to go up the line.

“I think the fourth set, we just came out and focused on our serving a little bit more and spreading the ball around,” Pipkin said.

Las Cruces defeated Cleveland and La Cueva downed St. Pius in the semifinals earlier in the day Saturday.

Las Cruces will spend all of next week against some of the metro’s best teams. The Bull- dawgs are home both Tuesday (Volcano Vista) and Saturday (Cleveland), and visit Albuquerque High in between those two matches, on Thursday night.