The Cosumnes River College women’s volleyball team lost their second game in a row at home against the Santa Rosa College Bear Cubs on Wednesday.
The Hawks noticeably struggled to get anything going in the first set with miscommunications and errors. The momentum of the game was quickly captured by the Bear Cubs and allowed them to gain a swift 25-13 win in the first set.
“It was us giving the game instead of them earning it,” said Head Coach Kari Nahlen.
Nahlen rallied the team and after a kill by sophomore defensive specialist Kenzie Nies, the score was 6-4 in Santa Rosa’s favor. The Bear Cubs answered by scoring seven consecutive points and eventually won the second set 25-16.
The third set was noticeably different for the Hawks by communicating and executing. The Hawks were back in the game with a 25-18 win in the third set after sophomore middle blocker Julia Zamfir finished the set with a spike.
“I just appreciate that we did fight a little bit,” said sophomore outside hitter Madelyn Motta. “We are gonna have bad days, we are gonna have hard days, we are gonna have poor games and as long as we can prove that we can fight and try and push ourselves, it shows that we have grit.”
The volleyball team battled blow-to-blow with Santa Rosa in the fourth set. Santa Rosa gained a minimal lead of 24-22 before using a timeout at the match point.
The Hawks’ chances of winning the game ended shortly after the timeout with Santa Rosa scoring their final point to win the set 25-22.
“They weren’t really scoring as much as we were erroring, so it was definitely a mental game,” Nies said. “We got in our heads and it went down from there.”
Nahlen expressed disappointment with the team’s performance.
“I mean, we weren’t executing,” Nahlen said. “When we played city, we executed really well and today we came out and I don’t know if we were overconfident or underconfident, but it was one of those and we just couldn’t quite make it happen today.”
The Hawks will play their next game at home on Friday against Lassen Community College at 1 p.m.