A Roxton Progress Cover "Jinx"?After scorching start, Chisum Volleyball cools down

Most sports fans are familiar with the "Sports Illustrated CoverJinx." The jinx is essentially created when an overperforming player or team is featured on the SI cover, only to immediately have a downturn in expectations — expectations that SI increased by featuring a player or team photo on its cover. Well, here at the Roxton Progress we are ashamed that our recent cover story on the Chisum Lady Mustangs Volleyball season may have created a jinx of its own!
You may recall, that at the time the cover story was printed, the Mustangs were off to a 7-0 start to the season, winning most of the matches in dominating fashion. The Mustangs climbed the MaxxPreps online standings, ranking in the Top 15 among Texas' Class 3-A high school volleyball teams. Five days later, the Mustangs lost their first match of the season, a three-set to zero defeat against Ford High School in Quinlan. Since the 7-0 start, the Mustangs have lost 6 of 8 matches, winning just 2 of 20 sets played. In between, they snagged two victories, both 3 sets to 0. The fact remains that since the Progress featured the Lady Mustangs on the cover page, the volleyball team has posted a 2-6 record, 1-5 in the conference. And we admit that the Progress is not immune to superstitions.
Still, a 9-6 record is nothing to sneeze at, and Coach Laura Nickerson offered the Progress some insight into the sudden change in the standings.
"In the second half (of the season), we have made more mental and hitting errors," Coach Nickerson said. "Our competition has been equal — and better at times. We haven't adjusted at times when we have needed to."
Nickerson added that she does not think all is lost with 7 matches remaining on the conference schedule. "I feel that we can turn this around, learn from our mistakes, and build."
For whatever role the newly-discovered "Roxton Progress Cover Jinx" might have played during the Lady Mustangs downward trend, we apologize. But, like Coach Nickerson, we'll be watching this team build. And if they happen to fall short of team goals this season, the 2020 edition of Chisum Volleyball can take pride in knowing they are the beginning of an upward swing toward building CISD into a force in 3A competition.

Finally, for those interested, as far as the SI cover jinx is concerned, here are just a few of the examples involving Texas sports over the last 50-60 years:

1970: Dallas Cowboy Les Shy featured on the SI Cover; waived two weeks later.
1977: The 11-0 Texas Longhorns and Earl Campbell featured; lost the Cotton Bowl and the national championship in the following game
1981: A.J. Foyt featured as a favorite to win his fifth Indianapolis 500; goes on to finish 13th
1977: Texas Rangers' second-baseman Bump Wills featured on SI cover as an example of the "rising Rangers"; it would be nearly 20 years before Texas made its first playoff appearance.
2010: Dallas Cowboys' Miles Austin appears on the cover the same week the Cowboys' lost a divisional playoff game
2011: Perhaps the most notable and painful of all, Texas Rangers' Nelson Cruz appears on SI cover at beginning of the World Series. Cruz has an opportunity to catch a flyball to clinch the Rangers' first World Series, but St. Louis Cardinals David Freese drives in the winning run when Cruz appears to fail to reach the extra 2 inches needed to make the catch. The Rangers came within one strike on two occasions of winning the World Series. Rangers baseball fans have yet to recover. "