Published: October 31, 2007 12:52 am      

Lady Eagles beat Crockett, move on to Area round

CENTERVILLE — Family, friends and fans waited long after the game Tuesday, greeting each player with cheers, showing them hand-made signs as they filed one-by-one out of the locker room.

They gave a round of applause to each player. They cheered like they hadn’t all season.

“It’s very exciting as you can tell,” said Fairfield’s Choicetta McMillian, as screams from the crowd echoed throughout the Centerville High School gymnasium. “I know it just means a lot to everybody.”

The Lady Eagles and their fans celebrated the team’s 3-0 (25-22, 25-17, 25-21) defeat of Crockett Tuesday in the Class 3A, Region III Bi-District playoffs — the first playoff game and win for the program in at least five years.

Fairfield faces China Spring in the Area round Thursday at Tiger Gym in Corsicana.

Second-year coach Dennis Johnson didn’t know for sure how long the Lady Eagles’ playoff drought has been.

“It’s great, it’s been building since the last year,” Johnson said. “We hope to just keep continuing, building that and keep going — making the playoffs and making it a yearly thing.”

Last year, Fairfield finished in a tie for third in District 19-3A, but lost the tiebreaker match against Madisonville.

This season, Fairfield (25-13, 7-3 in 19-3A) finished tied for second and flipped a coin and lost the second place seeding to Groesbeck.

At their first playoff game in at least five years, Lady Eagles fans showed up in droves.

“This is a pretty good turnout,” said Johnson of the fans. “The best one we’ve had.”

Fairfield players delivered for their fans.

They took early leads in each game, and with the exception of Game 1, had little trouble closing them out.

McMillian led the team with 10 kills including four in a row in the second game to help the Lady Eagles pull away.

“McMillian is amazing,” Crockett coach Ben Belshaw said. “There’s not much you can do against that. You can try different blocking schemes, but there’s not much you can do. My hat’s off to her.”

The Lady Bulldogs tried to make the match interesting, but committed at least six errors in each game. Five of Fairfield’s last six points in the first game were off Crockett errors.

“We made several errors throughout the whole thing,” Belshaw said.

“Early on in our season that’s how we started — being pretty inconsistent — and we made a lot of improvements, but they kind of came back and bit us.”

Crockett (13-25, 6-3 in 20-3A) finished second in its district.

The Lady Bulldogs’ mistakes didn’t diminish a record win for the Lady Eagles, who were the better passing team according to Belshaw.

Middle blocker Caitlin Neal had eight of Fairfield’s 36 kills. Senior Mandy Chavers had five blocks and two kills and outside hitter Courtney Nelson had five kills. Sarah Linton and Kati Linton each had a team-high two aces.

But the game — what the fans celebrated and cheered after — belonged to the two seniors, McMillian and Chavers.

“It just means so much to us to have that chance to be here,” McMillian said.