Escalante head coach Henry Gettler could only manage a small smirk as he sat on the bench and watched the mistakes pile up in the third set of the Lady Lobos’ matchup with Santa Rosa in the state volleyball tournament.
On a day that never seemed right from the beginning of pool play, the Lady Lobos were unable to match the Lady Lions in their first round 3-1 (25-23, 19-25, 25-14, 25-14) loss in the Class 2A state tournament Nov. 15 at Rio Rancho High School.
“If you were to look at the stats and see the mistakes, I bet we made twice as many,” Gettler said. “I’d guess 75 percent of that was back row.”
With the back row unable to move efficiently to pick up balls to transition from offense to defense, Escalante was left with out of system play that resulted in free balls and limited opportunities for their hitters.
Gettler called it “simple movement” and said he was just looking for any, at all.
“There was a lot of points out there where we didn’t get to our coverage,” senior middle Emma Ulibarri said. “We made our little mistakes and that hurt us.”
The set two victory was the only game where mistakes were minimized. Moving forward, serving mistakes doomed Escalante and quickly halted any momentum they built.
“Even when we did get things going a little more consistency, we’d come back and miss a serve,” Gettler said. “Untimely missed serves were huge for us and it changed everything because we could just not get into a rhythm.”
Nothing changed in the third set, as Escalante fell behind 17-8 after again sleepwalking in the opening sequences. The fourth set was much of the same story and things never got better after multiple timeouts called by Gettler.
The Lady Lions built the lead in the final set to 21-11 after three consecutive hitting errors by Escalante, including two from Hailey Whittaker and one from Aubrianna Hinds. Santa Rosa built the lead as large as 12 points before finishing off Escalante’s season.
“Give the credit to Santa Rosa,” Gettler said. “There’s a lot of reasons why we missed so many back-line plays. Our back-line play was so off and we never got it in tune, safe to say, all day.”
Ulibarri showed up big for Escalante and her play from the middle was the most consistent offense, which mostly came in the fashion of dinks and tip shots to the open areas of the court. She recorded six kills in the first set alone, which was the most competitive of the four games.
“I did everything I could do from what I saw (open) out there,” Ulibarri said. “Obviously, there wasn’t as many (kills) as I would have liked and what we needed.”
Escalante graduates six seniors from this year’s team that finished 20-2 overall, but they will have a solid foundation for next year with players like Zoe Archuleta, Kayleigh Lindstrom, Kalese Torrez and Kaylee Redwine.
“We have a very good core group coming back next year,” Gettler said. “This was good for them. They’ll remember this when we get back here next year.”