Las Cruces brings home third straight state title

As the wins kept coming, the challenge increased. The Las Cruces High School volleyball team won its third consecutive state title Nov. 15, dominating its way through a season and state tournament during which it was the target of every team’s best effort. They all wanted to be the team that ended the winning streak that has now reached 57 in a row.

This year’s state tournament run began with sweeps over Rio Rancho and Albuquerque and ended with 3-1 victories over Cleveland and La Cueva, the latter sending the championship trophy back home to Las Cruces. All year long, seniors Addison Massey, Sydney Pipkin and Caleigh Garcia, and a host of younger players, including juniors Ava Price and Lyza Jackson, didn’t let the weight of high expectations weigh them down.

Bulldawgs’ head coach Keith Leupold found extra satisfaction in this one because of the high expectations.

“We had the bull's eye on us and so you get to see a lot of your kids and how what they're made of when we get everybody's best shot,” Leupold said. “We’re supposed to win it and we have the two-time Gatorade Player of the Year and a two-time first-team all-state setter.” The two of them just did a great job leading, and it was an interesting time to watch kids and how everybody reacts to the pressures of being the favorite.”

That two-time, soon to be three-time, Gatorade Player of the Year is outside hitter Addison Massey. She says they managed to always stay focused in the moment and avoid the pressure.

“We just thought that every single game we know they're going to give us their best, so we have to make sure that we go out swinging first, and in practice and before practices and after practices, we just kept working on the correct thing, staying focused, and pushing ourselves to do better every single day, and that's how we prepared,” Massey said. “We just thought one game at a time and we understood that we had a little bit of pressure, but we just focused on getting better. If you don't focus on everybody else and just focus on yourself, it's a lot easier to be prepared.”

Senior setter Sydney Pipkin found the greatest stress relief came in relying on the team concept.

“We knew people wanted to come out and beat us whenever we were playing but I think it made us play better,” Pipkin said. “Just having teammates that we can rely on was really helpful. I always knew that they were going to have my back, so it was really nice to be able to lean on them.”

After graduating five seniors from last year’s state title team, Pipkin and Massey built a camaraderie around a whole new group of amazing teammates.

“They really did a great job in stepping up and just talking to me,” Pipkin said. and like I was being able to find them like “We would always work on our connection, and they were willing to work, which really helped.”

One thing that became very clear to Coach Leupold the past four years is that he was blessed to be experiencing coaching a very impressive duo.

“It's a fact of life,” Leupold said, “Addison Massey and Sydney Pipkin are not bothered by pressure. When you watch sports, it’s always the question, who's going to fold and who's going to accept the challenge. These kids just accept the challenge.”

This team went through its first 25 contests without dropping a set, but that changed in the first set of the state semifinal matchup with Cleveland. The Bulldawgs dropped that first set and were behind in a match for the first time in a long time.

“I had numerous people ask me what I said to the team after the first set,” Leupold said. “Like perhaps there's some magic incantation or something. I just reminded them that we're good and that we can weather a storm like this and I urged us to go out and get a quick lead in set No. 2. We ended up beating Cleveland in that second set 25 to 7. Volleyball is an interesting sport In a lot of sports that we play, like football and basketball, if you have a big lead at halftime, you come back out and you look up at the scoreboard and you still have that lead in the second half, but in volleyball, it gets all reset to 0-0 and so you have to rebuild your momentum.”

Massey felt that losing that set had a bit of a calming influence on Las Cruces.

“Losing that first set helped us relax because the first set when we went out there, we were all really nervous and we were just hesitating a lot,” she said. “After we lost the first set, our nerves are gone, and it definitely helped us to work harder in the next three sets. It gave us urgency, and it gave us confidence to come back in the next set because it just lit a fire under us to come out harder.”

The winning streak, the championships and all the accolades that come with it are the result of a team that did it together. Massey gets a lot of the headlines, but she knows how reliant she is on Pipkin and her teammates.

“It's definitely been our service and the fact that we're able to set anyone,” Massey said. “Our setter is amazing, and she just has a very high IQ of the game. Sydney is just able to get us so many perfect opportunities for the hitters.”

Pipkin spends a lot of time outside the limelight working on her game, so she is better able to put her teammates in a winning position. It’s the key to being a setter. One of the big keys for the Bulldawgs was their ability to dictate pace, to play faster than their opponents.

“I think transition balls are a really good time to run a fast-paced ball because the other team's not really expecting it,” Pipkin said. “The libero has a really good dig and then you’re trying to run a really fast tempo outside to find Addie.”

Leupold considers the opportunity to coach this team, and to watch the state’s top player on the court a major high point.

“We're fans of the game as coaches and when you see what Addison Massey does, you just take time to appreciate the skill and the beauty of what she just does.” Leupold said. “She's the kind of athlete from a hitting standpoint, where you want to get to the venue early so you can watch her warm up. She’s worth the price of admission to a certain degree, I'm guessing the same way it might be to watch Ohtani in batting practice.

“She had a setter who could put her into a position to be successful, and that's huge. When we went places, Addison Massey would actually have younger girls wanting to take pictures with her.”

And true to form, Massey and the Bulldawgs finished what they started three years ago.