The Portales Lady Ram volleyball team believes its best volleyball is ahead of them, coming into the District 4-3A tournament semifinals against Dexter tonight at the Portales High School gym. The Lady Demons swept Lovington in three games Tuesday to advance to the semifinal round. “We kind of expected it to be Dexter,” Lady Ram head coach Ruth Chavez said. Portales dominated Dexter in the two district regular season matches 3-0 and 3-1. “I think that we are prepared,” Chavez said. “We’ve played them before, that doesn’t necessarily mean you’re going to get the win, but we feel pretty confident. I think if we play, then we won’t have any problems.” “Practice has been good,” junior Tara Johnson said. “We’ve been working hard, scrimmaging each other like three-on-three and six-on-six, just trying to make it how it is in game situations.” Chavez said her girls have been working on very specific things this week in practice. “We’ve been focusing on trying not to make little errors and trying to get on little runs,” Chavez said. “The games we’ve lost, a lot of them were our own fault because we made errors that shouldn’t have been made.” “We get in that situation where we get one point and then we lose like three or four (points),” Johnson said. “I think if we keep it consistent and keep on getting points I think we can win.” But the Lady Rams are also guarding against the tendency to look forward to a possible Saturday rematch with Ruidoso for the district tournament championship. “I put it in their head that if we don’t get past (tonight) then we don’t move on,” Chavez said. “That could be the end. We’re just going to take it one step at-a-time and work hard to try to beat Dexter and then look on to Ruidoso.” The winner of tonight’s district semifinal game will travel to Ruidoso Saturday for the district championship. Ruidoso swept the season series with Portales on their way to an undefeated district regular season, and beat the Lady Rams at Portales Saturday in three games. “They’re looking forward to it,” Chavez said. “They know that it’s a big step to try to play for the district championship. We’ve been preparing all week trying not to look ahead (to Ruidoso) and to try to get the job done (tonight).” “We know that we want to win our game (tonight) so we can beat Ruidoso on Saturday because we are so excited about that game. I know we can do it,” Johnson said. “I think if we can just beat Dexter then we’ll be ready for Ruidoso.”