Jordan Byer, left and Karlee Hitchcock block the ball at the net during Fallon's match against Lowry.
When the Lady Wave volleyball team hosted the Lowry Lady Buckaroos Thursday, what followed was a close, high-speed match with both teams giving their all.
In the end, though, Lowry was victorious in four games: 25-23 to Fallon, then 25-19, 31-29 and 25-16 to Lowry.
The first set was a back and forth stalemate; one team would score, then the other would almost immediately tie. Neither side gained more than a two or three-point lead before the other sided out. Eventually, however, the Wave gained an advantage, holding ahead of Lowry by only a point or two each exchange, and snatched the set point on an error.
In the second set, the Lady Buckaroos almost immediately claimed an advantage from Fallon hitting the ball out of bounds; they had a 3-0 lead before Fallon’s first serve. The possession was short-lived, though, and Lowry quickly reclaimed the ball. The Lady Buckaroos held the lead the whole set, never falling below a two-point lead.
The Wave, however, came back with a vengeance in the third set. Things started similar to the last, with Lowry gaining an early lead; Fallon rallied and pulled back from a 13-6 deficit to tie the score at 22-22. The set became heated with one team at set point right before the other scored. In the end, however, Lowry nailed their final points first.
The final set was the most one-sided of the match. While Fallon fought back hard, a series of errors and out of bounds hits passed the ball to Lowry several times; the Lady Buckaroos were closing on match point before the Wave made it into double digits. While Fallon tried to recover, Lowry claimed victory with a nine-point lead.
Fallon coach Patti Daum said her team mentally lost the match and fell apart through errors.
“Mental errors will kill you, and that’s what got us,” she said. “We just had some mental errors at crucial times that didn’t help us.”
Lorynn Fagg said they played strong in the beginning and held their composure. In the third set, though, she said things started getting away from them; by the fourth set, they were no longer in the game. She said the key was to work on pushing through the entire match and not giving in.
Daum praised Macie Anderson, Fagg and Journey Martin for their performances. Anderson was a leader in kills, nailing 10 while Fagg and Martin were strong servers with four and two aces respectively.
Karlee Hitchcock was another leader in kills, also hitting 10, and Jordan Beyer made seven. Beyer and Hitchcock were also good on defense, nailing eight and six blocks respectively. Shelbi Schultz was a strong leader in assists with 23.
The Lady Wave plays at home against South Tahoe (3-1 in league) tonight. The varsity team’s match begins at 6 p.m.