On Tuesday, fans packed the gym at Prosper High School to witness possibly the biggest rivalry in 5A volleyball go at each other for the first time of the 2015 season. In the 2014 season, the Leopards won two of four games against the Eagles. This year, the Eagles took the first matchup in four sets.

“The score looked like it was a fairly competitive match, but I feel like we didn’t show up ready to play,” head volleyball coach Jason Nicholson said. “Kind of a rough start in the first set then it kind of carried on throughout.”

After losing the first two sets by scores of 25-22 and 25-21, the Leopards turned things around in set three and won the set 25-18.

“In set three we made a little run,” Nicholson said. “We got back in it a little bit, started pressuring them into some errors which allowed us to take the third set.”

Serving was a high point of the third set as the Eagles began to have trouble handling the Leopards’ serves.

“We served the ball well in the third set,” Nicholson said. “We kind of got them out of the system which forced them to start making some mistakes. They gave us some easy points and anytime you can get some easy points against a good team like that that gives you a better chance of winning the set.”

However, after taking the third set, Nicholson said that the team “went back to our previous ways in the fourth set.”

“We just couldn’t really get our energy up,” Nicholson said. “I don’t know if it’s the gym that they have, or what it is, but the last two years when we have showed up over it has seemed like we can’t bring our A-game.”

Offensive and defensive adjustments were made in practice throughout the week leading up to the matchup against Sherman on Friday, Oct. 2.

“We did a really good job of winning the serve and the serve receive game, but we didn’t do a very good job of winning the offensive and defensive game,” senior Jordan Fate said. “We are going to start implementing faster things and changing how we run our offense and defense.”

One thing that Nicholson emphasized was the team had a problem bringing the energy level up during the game. One solution to that may be changing up the team’s personnel.

“We kinda have to figure out where we are at, get something going in practice and change the mojo a little bit,” Nicholson said. “Maybe make some personnel changes and mix some things up to kind of wake everyone up and get going.”

Heading into Friday’s match against Sherman, Nicholson sees this match as an opportunity to get the team back on track and prepare for the second round of district play.

“I think that [Sherman] will probably be a good match for us to get our heads back on track and get ready to go,” Nicholson said. “This is the last district match of round one. It’s time for us to flip the page and start thinking ahead.”