End of women’s volleyball season closing in

FELIPE GAMINO Sports Editor @fgamino13

Women’s volleyball entered the final stages of their season and the team dropped both of their games against the Citrus College Owls and the El Camino College Warriors.

The Brahmas came into both games having lost against the Santa Barbara Vaqueros and Santa Monica Corsairs.

The team gave fight to the Owls winning the second set 25-17. However, Citrus would win the other three sets 25-13, 25-15 and 25-14.

Head coach Edison Zhou evaluates the team’s performance against Citrus and El Camino.

“We didn’t play bad. Right now we are missing Rachel [Wiley] and something that we can focus on is how to get kills,” Zhou said.

Catelynn Pulido led the team with 12 kills followed by Landry Bearden with six. Bearden had 13 assists in the game against the Owls.

For Citrus, Gina Lipscomb had 24 kills, while Iris Bernal and Jazmine Carlos had seven.

Jullianna Aceituno had 36 assists. Pulido said that the team were lacking energy throughout parts of the two games.

“It is a lot of hesitation and sometimes we didn’t know what to do and that prevented us from getting points,” Pulido said.

The Brahmas made a lot of errors in the attack having a total of 19, three more than the Owls.

For the game against the Warriors, things went differently for the team. In the first set, three straight attacking errors, two from Keturah Scott and one from Linnea Romero gave the Warriors a 4-1 lead.

After the timeout, the team would get back into the game cutting the deficit to three points, however it would be the Warriors who would get the upper hand and would win the first set 25-17 off another attacking error this time by Catelynn Pulido.

In set number two, it was Scott that gave the Brahmas the lead. However like in the first set, service errors proved vital as the Warriors quickly took over.

Kills by Pulido and Bearden gave Pierce momentum making the score 7-5 in favor of the Warriors.

The Brahmas were down by two points in the majority of the set, however the Warriors took off winning set two 25-13.

In the third and final set, El Camino would put the game to bed winning the third set 25-7.

Like most of the game, attacking and ball handling errors gave the Warriors a 6-0 lead. fgamino.roundupnews@gmailcom

The Brahmas had no response for theWarriorsoffenselosingby18points, their biggest deficit of the season.

Pulido led the team with nine kills, followed by Bearden with four. Bearden also had 10 assists.

Renee Brydon, Deeann Smith, Sophia Loiola and Merris Ewell all had five kills for the Warriors.

For this game, the Brahmas made 20 errors, 14 more than El Camino.

Bearden said that the errors they made could have been prevented.

“Little mistakes can be controlled from our side of the court and improving on our serving would be a good start,” Bearden said.

The Brahmas are back on the court for their last two games of the season. They face Victor Valley College on Nov. 7 and Glendale two days later. Both games begin at 6 p.m.

“When heavy rainfall comes the whole back side of your guys soccer field floods out,” Narcissi said.

Head coach Adolfo Perez said that, although the purpose of the construction is to prevent flooding of the field, it has never affected them before.

“I have been here 18 years, and they built the field in 2002, and we have never had a game suspended because of rain,” Perez said. “I know the water was high, back in 2003 or 2004, and we even have pictures on it with a canoe, and that was it, we never had a game canceled.”

Team captain and midfielder Diana Salonga said the dry field has become an issue for everyone.

“Our field is already really thick to begin with, but when its dry its just a little tougher to play on,” Salonga said. “When you fall you are more susceptible to being scratched.”

Salonga also said that choosing to do it during their season makes things even worse.

“Honestly I don’t think it’s fair, because we are only in season for a couple of months,” Salonga said. “They took a part of our field, and i know it’s for the better, but now we don’t have water and i feel like they should have done it before our season started.”

Perez said that they were going to start the construction in the offseason, but due to financial issues it had to begin sooner.

“We were told at first that they were going to do it after the season, and I think what happened is it was going to cost the school too much money if we had waited,” Perez said. “I think that’s why they started, and it was supposed to not affect the field, but as we know obviously it has.”

Perez said that keeping the field in good condition is always his priority.

“We get water on average once every two weeks at the end of last month or so, and we worked so hard in the summer to get our field up to date,” Perez said. “Now I tell my assistant coach what we are going to work on today, and then we go around and cover holes ourselves with a shovel and extra dirt.”

Perez believes that the current quality of the field can have a negative effect on his team’s performance.

“We are the only team in our conference that plays on grass, everyone else plays on turf, so in theory it should be an advantage to us,” Perez said. “The fact that it’s not in good shape it’s a disadvantage, and were a team that actually likes to pass and likes to play so it’s definitely not helping us.”

Even with the field in disarray, Salonga believes that it won’t hold the Brahmas back from getting good results.

“It would be better if our grass is grass, but now we are playing on hay,” Salonga said. “Despite that, we will still do well.” nmartinez.roundupnews@gmailcom