SAN ANTONIO – August is never a time to count your chickens when it comes to Texas high school volleyball, but the Churchill Chargers are off to a great start to the season.

Coming into the Pieper Warriors Showcase tournament, the Chargers were ranked fourth in the San Antonio area, according to MaxPreps.com.

When speaking with the Chargers before their match against Sotomayor High School, they shared that this year’s team is so much closer and connected than last season.

“We’re all like really like connected, and I feel like we all like each other,” senior Lucy Shepler said. “Last year was a lot of cliques, and this year it’s like we’re all like in a conversation, we all are just so happy together, and it’s a good feeling, it’s a really good feeling.”

“I feel like it’s like more trust and everyone’s like best friends with each other, and it just makes it more fun, I think like having more fun on the court makes it easier to play with each other,” senior Gia Duenez said.

The theme the Chargers went with this year comes from “Hunger Games,” the book and movie series, but the motto isn’t safe to mention on TV. So what is that motto?

“That we like to beat people, like we have, like this one thing, I’m not going to say it on TV, but we just like to beat people,” Hepler said.

“Lucy mentioned that we want to beat people, and that’s not the phrase that they use, and that’s not the phrase that I use with them either, but the ”Hunger Games” is all about fight to the death, and there will be one lone survivor,” Churchill head volleyball coach Katy Ruiz said. “That’s what high school sports is, at the end of the season, there is one team that wins state, and we are here to compete for that spot.”

The Chargers will have their fight through district play when they host Madison at 7:15 p.m. on Sept. 9.

Read more reporting and watch highlights and full games on the Big Game Coverage page.