It was a typical up and down season opener, but the Flower Mound volleyball team fought through every obstacle to sweep Justin Northwest on Tuesday night.

    The 25-23, 25-18, 25-21 win gives the team confidence yet a few minor kinks to work out heading into this weekend’s Duncanville Tournament. The team will open the event against Amarillo.

    “We are excited to play a team of that caliber because it’s going to do nothing but prepare us for our district schedule,” Flower Mound head coach Marci Brinkman said of the upcoming tournament. “We want to play teams like that, and tonight was a great start for us.”

    The Jaguars (1-0) never trailed Northwest (0-1) in any of the three games. What’s more, they were able to build substantial leads in each game, including 7-0 leads in Games 1 and 2. Macey Singleton finished with nine kills followed by teammate Liz Theesfeld’s eight. Rachel Riley picked up six kills and Brittney VanArsdale had five. Kaitlyn Cole pulled in four kills as well while Erin Gonzales had 19 assists.

    The rough points proved to be errors. In fact, Northwest managed to keep each game interesting despite being very overmatched – because of the Jaguar errors.

    In Game 1, for example, Northwest fell behind 7-0 yet scored eight of the game’s next 13 points to narrow the gap to 12-9. Of those eight points, five were the result of Jaguar errors. Later in that same game, the Jags pulled ahead 16-9 yet only led 24-20 as the game wore down to a close. Flower Mound then gave up three-straight points before putting it away for good.

    Flower Mound also saw an 11-3 lead practically disappear in Game two, and also had several errors in Game 3 after building as much as a 12-6 lead.

    “I especially saw most of it in Game 3 and I think it was because the girls got comfortable with the lead,” Brinkman said. “But we kept the lead the whole time and overall I think it was mostly highs for us. We learned how to get out of whatever slumps we faced, and it was good to see.”

    Northwest could have easily been blown out of the gym early as the Jaguars showed to be the aggressor from the start. Brinkman added her team was solid in serve receive from the very beginning.

    “It was a good night for us, feels great to get the first win,” she said.

     Brinkman is looking to rekindle the fire that propelled the Jaguars into a program that can contend each year. When she took over three years ago, the Jaguars had posted a combined 17-53 record the previous two seasons. Over the next two years, they went 36-30 and made the playoffs twice – including winning their first ever playoff game in school history in 2007.

    Last year looked to be a third year in a row for the program but they failed to make playoffs. Brinkman said her team’s focus this year is to learn from last year and get off to a solid start.