The players are frustrated. The coaches are frustrated. Everyone around the Española Valley High School volleyball team seems to be frustrated.
The Lady Sundevils dropped their fourth consecutive game, Oct. 21, at the hands of Capital High School, a team they beat, 3-1, a few weeks prior. They lost the latest match against the Lady Jaguars, 3-0, only making the third set competitive, which ended at 25-21. The Lady Sundevils were beaten in the first set, 25-14, and then they lost the second set in similar fashion, 25-16.
“I’ve got to change something at this point,” Española head coach Damon Salazar said. “It has been seven or eight games in a row. I think we have had one good game, the Capital game (Oct. 4), out of nine.”
Española’s Autumn Martinez got the first kill of the game, but that effort was gradually negated as the Lady Sundevils could not keep up with Capital. They had trouble dealing with the Lady Jaguars’ hits and failed to set up quality attacks.
“I feel like we just weren’t ready for their hits,” Española libero Meranda Romero said. “We weren’t down. We didn’t talk very much, and we weren’t organized.”
Romero described Española’s inability to defeat Capital a second time as a mess of little mistakes, adding up to create a larger mistake.
“Our passing right now is just horrendous,” Salazar said. “And our setting needs to be a little bit better. And our defense is bad too. It’s a lot of things right now. It’s not just one thing.”
Martinez’s first point of the game was Española’s first lead of the night, and the Lady Sundevils had to wait until the third set to lead the Lady Jaguars again. Chloe Fell hit the ball through a pair of Capital blockers’ hands, and the ball fell out of bounds to put Española up, 4-2.
For the remainder of the third set, the game was back-and-forth, until the scoreline neared 20 points.
The Lady Jaguars capitalized on a net violation, a couple of balls hit into the net and some defensive gaps in the middle to put the match away.
The loss places the Lady Sundevils second from bottom in their district, with a 2-4 district record. They have two district games left and are guaranteed to finish the regular season with an overall losing record.
“I’m kind of frustrated, because we have all of the talent, but we can’t seem to figure it out,” Romero said.
Before the match, Salazar was hoping to pull out a strong win, so the team could secure a good position in the district tournament. At the moment, a winning performance at the district tournament is the only way the Lady Sundevils will pull through to the state tournament.
With this loss, Salazar is expecting a low placement to start the district tournament, and he is unsure if his team has the consistency to win four or five consecutive matches.