By Joey Fernandez, Arts & Entertainment Editor
The MVCC women’s volleyball team opened the season Tuesday night with a hard-fought loss to Triton College, losing in straight sets 3-0 (25-19, 25-19, 25-15).
Key performers for the Cyclones were Nicole Ramirez with 19 assists and 14 digs, Brianna Knezz with 10 kills, and Marriel McCaskill with 9 kills.
Despite the letdown loss, head coach Lauren Lorenz thinks the team’s abilities are much better than what was shown tonight.
“How they played today did not accurately reflect how they are as a team,” she said. “I think they were caught off guard a little bit and the other team just outpaced us.”
Even after being swept, sophomore Knezz is still optimistic.
“I expect us to do good the rest of the season,” she expressed. “I think after this game we can see what we did wrong, learn from our mistakes, and we have a month of practice to get better. So the rest of the season we will do better.”
After every game, coaches reflect on ways the team can improve, and Lorenz believes that the team has a few things to work on.
“I think they could have done a lot better on serve receive, and on defense we struggled reading the other team,” she said. “When they were tipping, we weren’t ready for it. When they were swinging, we weren’t ready for it. Offensively we held our own, but we could’ve mixed up our shots a little more.”
Sophomore McCaskill expressed how the team may be able to use this game to see ways to improve for the long haul of the season.
“Today was not our best, but luckily this was the first game so we’ll be able to take this to practice and move forward,” she said.
With the rest of the season ahead of them, personal goals that players may have set for themselves are still within grasp. Both Knezz and McCaskill have different goals for themselves but they lead to the same outcome.
Knezz said for her, “a personal goal would be to have a good hitting percentage, more kills than errors, and also to get my serves in and more aces.”
McCaskill said her goal is “to get more digs on defense and also to make sure I’m keeping a positive attitude while on the court at all times.”
With all things considered, Lorenz had a message for the team after the loss: “I told them that they have a lot of work to do in practice.”
With their next match a few weeks off, the Cyclones have quite a bit of time to fix mistakes and bounce back from this loss. They play Wisconsin team Bryant and Stratton College at home at 6 p.m. March 1.
