Cecil’s Lady Seahawks lose to College of Southern Maryland 0-3

By Kevin Phillips NORTH EAST–Cecil Col-

lege looked to add another victory to its ledger in its MDJuco volleyball contest against visiting College of Southern Maryland Thursday evening.

The Seahawks struggled to find any kind of consistency throughout the match as they fell to Hawks in straight sets (25-14, 2522, 25-19) to drop their record to 1-1 on the season.

“I think with 100% certainty we could have beaten them. Now, they’re a very strong team,” Cecil head coach Eden Barton said. “They were hitting it to spots we weren’t making adjustments to get to. It’s simply where you go on the court, and when we moved up, they would hit it over your head.”

The Seahawks came out with high energy and played Southern Maryland close during the first half of the first game, trailing 11-9 after twenty points, but the Hawks started to find empty places on the court to hit to, closing the frame on a 14-5 surge to earn a 2514 win and a 1-0 lead in the match.

Barton liked the way Cecil came out to start the first game, but a few errors in the middle of the first game seemed to put the Seahawks in a hole in which they did not recover from. “They came out hard. They came out with energy. I think we had some unforeseeable errors, and that turned into one then two then three points, which they really couldn’t come back from,” Barton said. “They came back from it in the last ten points, but when you lose your energy in the beginning, it’s tough to regain it.”

The Hawks built off the momentum from the end of the first game to jump out to a 7-2 lead, but Cecil responded with its best stretch of volleyball as the went on a 15-5 run to take a 17-12 lead, forcing Southern Maryland to call timeout.

After the timeout, the Hawks bounced back, however, with a 13-5 game-closing run to win the set and increase their lead to 2-0 in the match.

Southern Maryland completed the sweep in the third game as they built a 10-5 lead and slowly pulled away from there to earn a 25-16 victory.

Barton believes that the Seahawks can learn from this game and apply it for the remainder of the season.

“In this game, you have to go back to the basics. Where is your base on the court? Where do you have to be all of the time? What are you looking at on the other side?,” Barton said. “Sometimes, when you get in the heat of the game and play, you don’t do that and get all clustered up in the center. Then, you lose your focus and have to reset. Going forward, it’s something you can always work on and really zone in on getting back to basics.”

Cecil got a teamhigh 11 kills and 12 digs while Skylar Klingler tallied 17 assists.

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