With UT Recruit Leading the Way, Westlake Volleyball Reaches New Heights

By Luke Lawhorn

Reporting Texas

 

 

Westlake High School senior Lily Davis could see how close the Chaparrals were to finally getting over the hump. They had won two of the first three sets over Cibolo Steele on Tuesday night at Lehman High School  and were on the verge of advancing to the Texas UIL Class 6A Region IV volleyball final.

In order to put the match away to extend Westlake’s deepest playoff run since 2014, Davis knew her team couldn’t get comfortable. Before the fourth set, the University of Texas volleyball recruit gathered her teammates in a huddle to remind everyone of the work they had put in over the last three years.

“I was saying, ‘Let’s go!’” Davis recalled. “Our season was on the line. That was the moment that was the biggest shift. We had to decide if we were going to come out and whoop their butt or if we were just going to go to five (sets).”

Led by Davis’ game-high 25 kills, the Chaparrals took care of business in the fourth set, winning 25-18 and the match 3-1. The 6-foot-2 outside hitter followed that performance up with 34 kills in Westlake’s 3-2 victory over Buda Johnson in the Region IV Final on Thursday, sending the Chaps to the state tournament for the first time since 2009.

For Davis, the all-time Westlake kills leader and gold medal winner in the FIVB U19 Beach Volleyball World Championships,  the victory showed just how far she and her teammates had come in their high school careers.

In Davis’ previous three years at Westlake, she had been a part of disappointing playoff losses. In 2021, the Chaparrals lost in the first round and then changed coaches, replacing Marci Laracuente after four seasons with Miguel Saenz, who had coached at Austin’s Bowie High for seven years. 

“When I got here, the girls in the program had never won a playoff game,” Saenz said. “They always go to the playoffs and they lose, and so I’ve been working really hard on changing the culture.”

In Davis’ sophomore season, the Chaps again lost in the bi-district round of the playoffs, but the direction of the program took a positive turn. Last year the team won two postseason games before losing to Dripping Springs in the regional quarterfinal. And now with 16 seniors on the team and the experience of early-round losses, Saenz has transformed Westlake’s mindset from just being competitive in their district to top a feared program across the state. 

“When I got here, they were really thinking about beating district opponents and I’m like, forget district opponents, we need to work on beating playoff opponents,” Saenz said. “They work hard and they bought in and as a result, we’re starting to have a championship mentality.”

The culture change began with intense practices. According to Davis, Saenz makes the team work harder than “any other coach they’ve ever had” and that it’s his mentality that’s propelled the team to the state tournament.

“A big part of why we’re so successful is because our practices are so competitive and he makes them that way,” Davis said. “It’s just a full team effort, even for people that aren’t playing on the court, they’re a big part of why we’re winning.”

Including Davis signing with the Longhorns, the Westlake roster has six players who inked on Wednesday’s national signing day to continue playing volleyball at the collegiate level. Senior libero Mallory Weyand, who committed to Harding University in Arkansas, has also seen the program change and credits the Chaparrals’ success to the new culture.

“I remember my freshman year when they were talking about the team, it just wasn’t as close,” Weyand said. “Now it’s just so different. Throughout the years, we’ve gone so close to Saenz. The culture that he brings to everyone, we’re all like a family and it just makes such a difference.” 

Davis said that the team creates time for team outings as that close bond translates onto the court.

“We all hang out outside of school,” Davis said. “We all do team lunches every day. We do it on the weekends. I think that’s the biggest difference. We’ve never had that close a team until this year.”

Last season’s third-round loss to Dripping Springs was tough to get over for Weyand. Westlake had split its district games with the Tigers, knowing they weren’t some sort of juggernaut. Knowing that they had one final shot at a run at a state title, Weyand took her offseason training up a notch.

“It was kind of a different mindset because any game could be my last,” she said. “I got hurt not too long ago, and I was so scared that I wasn’t going to be able to play in playoffs. It’s a whole different mentality being a senior because you know it could be your last.”

After Westlake won Tuesday’s match to punch their ticket to the Region IV Final, the whole team ran onto the court and emotionally embraced one another, knowing what it took to reach the furthest the program has gone in a decade. Davis said that the journey has been hard.

“I think there’s always been kind of like a mental block and a stigma around first round and then it was third round and I think just playing together as a team, since there’s so many seniors, we don’t want to end on a bad note,” Davis said. “We want to win state, and I think we’re going to if we keep playing like this.”