Katy has been focused on two things all season.

Get to the playoffs and play your best volleyball once you get there.

“We lost some people last year but gained some people this year,” said Maddie Waak, a senior captain. “It’s been a really good season so far and I think that we can go just as far as we did last year.”

The Tigers achieved their first goal, finishing second in district and got off to a good start in the playoffs Monday, sweeping Fort Bend Travis in three sets: 25-12, 25-21, 25-16 in the Class 6A bi-district round of the playoffs.

“We really were trying to finish fast. We wanted to start off strong and finish strong so we could end it in three sets,” Chandler Lee said. “The second thing we were trying to do is just worry about each point. Instead of looking ahead and worrying about finishing we wanted to just keep our mind on the present and keep doing well with every point in front of us.”

Katy took a commanding lead in the first set and didn’t look back easily gaining the advantage.

The second set was a different story though, Katy struggled out of the gate and Travis continued to build a lead and was up 18-12 when Katy took its second timeout of the set.

The Tigers came back and reeled off seven straight points to take the lead back and eventually won the set 25-21.

“We had to get back to the basics,” said senior Libero Izzy Denton. “We had to make sure to get a good pass, get a good set and get a good hit. You can’t do anything without a pass, so I just tried to do that for my setters and they did their job. I just got to watch from the back.”

A key point in the second set was when Maddy Chaapel made a diving save of a ball headed at the scorers table, Katy eventually turned what looked like a Travis point into a Tigers point and the teams confidence continued to grow from there.

“I turned around and realized that the ball was heading out an wasn’t on our side of the court anymore, and I was just like ‘oh shoot, I can still get this and help us get the point’. I just did my part and got to it.”

Katy didn’t let Travis keep it close in the third set, the Tigers took an early lead in the set and kept pushing it, easily earning the sweep.

“We did overall we did a great job,” said Katy head coach Karen Paxton. “Our setters did a great job moving the ball around, our middles did a great job on the block and it allowed a lot of splits for Chandler and Maddie on the right side. Defensively, we had some players that were able to keep the ball and help us in long rallies. It prevented them from going on any kind of three or four point runs. We also were really smart with shot selection.”

Katy will take on Cypress Creek in the third round, date and time to be determined. The Tigers have a wealth of experience on the team having made it to the regional final last year, and they are looking forward to every match in front of them.

“The key for us is to just play our game,” Denton said. We can’t lose sight of what our goal is at the end of the day. We have to go one team at a time and take it that way. We can’t talk about what teams we could play in the future and only focus on the team we are playing next. We’ll be ok if we do that.”