Up against the Folsom Lake College Falcons for the second time this season, the volleyball team pulled out a 3-0 clean sweep win on Wednesday.
Sophomore defense specialist Carlie McCormick said playing the Falcons recently allowed the team to switch up how they approached their defense strategies.
“We’ve been running something a little different especially on them because we are now able to pick up those spots that they normally like,” McCormick said. “We made them adjust to us rather than us adjusting to them.”
Each set was a close point-for-point match, but in the end, the Hawks pushed through. For all three sets, the team hit a continuous 25 points while the Falcons hit 20 in the first set, 12 in the second, and came close in the third with 21 points.
Freshman middle blocker Lauren Stutes said overall the game went well and with their teamwork, they were able to work through some of the challenges.
“We started off a little rocky but at the end of the last set after the last time out, we were just like ‘we are going to go out there and we are going to communicate, talk how we talk’ and since then it was good,” Stutes said.
Before the timeout, the Hawks were down 19-15 but finished the set strong at 19-25 after the pep-talk.
McCormick said that one of the strongest characteristics of the team is their communication skills.
“One of our strong suits as a team is being able to come out and talk and fix it immediately and not allow it to get us down as a team as well,” McCormick said. “Being able to get out of ruts ourselves rather than having our coach have to get us out of it.”
Coming off of a loss, Stutes said she and the team were motivated to win this game.
“I felt that the loss that we had on Friday night was just like a kind of ‘get going’ kind of thing to tell us that ‘we’ve got to finish off the season strong and get ready for playoffs because it’s not going to be easy’ and we are ready for that,” Stutes said.
Nahlen said the next game is an exciting one and the goal is to keep focusing on their defense.
“It’s our sophomore night, so it’s a big night for our team and just making sure we continue to hit hard, hit our spots and just become a better blocking team,” Nahlen said. “That’s something we’ve been working on all year and we have definitely gotten better, but we just continuously need to work on it.”
The Hawks defeated Diablo Valley College 3-0 at home on Friday for their sophomore night.
Before setting their eyes on playoffs, the volleyball team will close out conference play away to Santa Rosa Junior College and Modesto Junior College on Wednesday and Friday respectively.