Pontchartrain Dreamin’

Central Catholic Lady Eagles head coach Latashia Wise was brimming with confidence after the Lady Eagles’ first-round victory against West St. John, predicting a second-round victory against Ascension Catholic with a team that she said was much improved from the beginning of the season.
On Monday night, her team, the No. 10 seed, proved her statements correct in exactly the fashion she had predicted, picking up a 3-1 victory (25-21, 25-11, 13-25, 25-19) at No. 7 seed Ascension Catholic in Division V second-round playoff action.
The win allowed the Lady Eagles (21-20) to achieve a long-term goal of returning to the Pontchartrain Center in Kenner for the state tournament, somewhere they have been in recent years with much more experienced teams with the same returning talent.
Wise made note of that in her postgame remarks Monday in differentiating this year’s team from one’s of the past.
“We had to collectively do it as a team,” she said. “It didn’t come from one person … We had to do it collectively as a team with everybody (coming) off my bench. We’re playing with a seventh grader. We had Katie Hoffpauir. … She played well, Hallie Autin played well, Rebecca David, she turned the corner. We have our two seniors who (have) given us great and outstanding leadership, so anytime you can have all your pieces in a puzzle come together around this time of the year, that’s great.”
Wise said she thought it helped that her team had played Ascension Catholic (20-17) earlier this season in the first game of the year in September, a contest in which the Lady Eagles fell 3-0 (25-18, 25-9, 25-16).
“I believe that it helped it, that it got them mentally prepared because … not often players can recognize when they change as a team,” Wise said. “I think this team here, they recognize that they’ve done that. They know that that was the first game of the season, and I can say they know how bad we were. But as I always tell any of my teams, when you know how bad you are, you know how good you can become.”
With the win, the Lady Eagles now will face No. 2 Ascension Episcopal at 10:50 a.m. Thursday.
In Monday’s first game, there were multiple ties and lead changes and neither team took control until Central Catholic took the lead for good on an Ascension Catholic error for a 14-13 advantage.
From there, the Lady Eagles outscored Ascension Catholic 11-8 for the win.
In game two, Ascension Catholic took an early 4-1 lead on an ace, but Central Catholic came back and tied the game at 4 on an ace by Brittany Longman.
Central Catholic took the lead one play later on a kill by Kaitlyn Gros and never trailed the remainder of the game, using Ascension Catholic mistakes and its own play to take the win.
The game ended on an Ascension Catholic error.
Ascension Catholic coach Chandra Ewen agreed that her team’s errors and plays on Central Catholic’s part hurt her squad.
“I think we came out really flat, and we prepared for exactly what they did,” Ewen said.
Ewen, though, credited Gros, who she said she thought was Central Catholic’s best player.
“She’s extremely smart,” she said. “She knows how to run their floor, but she knows how to run her opponent’s floor, and she picked us apart tonight and we had prepared for it.”
Gros finished the game with seven kills, 17 assists and 11 digs.
Ewen also said her team didn’t do the things she needed to do at the net.
“Very uncharacteristically, both of my middles finished in negative hitting percentage,” Ewen said. “I think my setter had more kills than one of my outsides. It was just not the night that we were looking for, obviously.”
In Game 3, however, Ascension Catholic appeared to have put things together.
After falling victim to three consecutive double hits and a kill by Gros for a 4-0 deficit, Ascension Catholic soon came back and tied the game at 5 on an ace by Julia Beck and took the lead on a kill by Rae’Shaun Malancon for a 6-5 advantage.
Ascension Catholic led for the remainder of the contest, at one point going on an impressive 10-0 run that began with a kill by Grace Villia that turned a 12-10 advantage into a 22-10 lead.
The run ended on an error but Ascension Catholic closed out the game on a kill by Michayla Spano to take the game, 25-13.
“We very much controlled the net,” Ewen said of the third game.
Ewen said her team played smart in the third game but just didn’t continue that in the fourth game.
In game 4, Central Catholic led for much of the game.
While Ascension Catholic hung around and cut the deficit to as little as one at 20-19 on a hitting error by Central Catholic, the Lady Eagles reeled off the final points via a Longman kill, a block by Autin and two Ascension Catholic errors before Longman closed the game with a kill sending Central Catholic and its fans into celebration.
Other top contributors for the Lady Eagles were Brittany Longman, eight kills and eight digs; Hallie Autin, five kills and five blocks; Rebecca David, seven blocks; Quincee Wiggins, six kills; Emma Aucoin, seven digs and Katie Hoffpauir, three aces.
In the loss, Ascension Catholic had 86 digs, five blocks, 34 kills, seven aces and 33 assists.
Malancon and Spano led Ascension Catholic. Malancon had 13 kills and three blocks, while Spano recorded four kills, 28 assists, two aces and 20 digs.
Other top contributors included Kaylee Burns, one kill, two assists, two aces and 22 digs; Amber Blanchard, one ace and 22 digs; Villia, five kills, one assist, one ace, two digs and two blocks; Hannah Settoon, seven kills and three digs; Beck, three kills, one assist, one ace and 12 digs; and Emily Villa, one kill, one assist and five digs.
With their long term goal achieved, Wise said following the game, “We’re enjoying getting to Kenner. That’s what we’re doing right now. We’re going to enjoy getting to Kenner, we’re going to get back in the gym. We’re going to keep getting better. This team (has) got to keep getting better. That’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to keep getting better, and whatever happens for us is going to be fate and it’s going to happen.”