The IUS Volleyball team lost its home-opener to Asbury College on Wednesday, Sept. 9, in the Activities Building.
The Grenadiers fell to the Eagles 25-18 in the first game.
The Grenadiers rallied and won the second game 25-20, only to lose the next two games, 25-20 and 25-21 and the match.
“I am not really pleased with my team’s performance because I know they can play better than that,” Lesley Drury-Prather, IUS Volleyball head coach, said.
This is the second straight loss for the Grenadiers, bringing their record to 1-4 for the season.
“Overall, I think we did OK, but we have a lot of stuff to work on in practice,” Lindsey Maymon, sophomore outside hitter, said.
Maymon led the Grenadiers with 11 kills, followed by Lindsey Ragland, sophomore right- side hitter, with eight kills.
Lauren McCartin, junior libero, and Ragland led the Grenadiers with seven digs each.
“I love their competitive drive, and they fight for every single play,” Drury-Prather said. “They fight so hard for me in practice, but they won’t fight against other teams.
“In practice, balls aren’t hitting the floor, and they are serving aggressively,” Drury-Prather said. “Tonight, we just missed a lot of serves, and it just wasn’t great for us tonight.”
The Grenadiers struggled with their serving throughout the entire match with 12 service errors.
“We needed to come together and not miss as many serves as we did,” Emily Knight, sophomore defensive specialist, said. “I thought we could push and win, but we just didn’t push hard enough.”
The Grenadiers’ roster this season is made up of four freshman, four sophomores and one junior.
“We have a lot of young girls on the team, and we are still trying to come together and have the chemistry that we need,” McCartin said.
Drury-Prather said she is looking forward to future seasons with her young team, but she is not overlooking this season.
“We are very, very young, and I think this season is going to be a building season for us,” Drury-Prather said. “We are still going to fight hard and play all of our matches the best we can, but this is going to be good for us next year because we are going to be playing together, and we are not going to be losing anybody next year.”
The Grenadiers are aware of their youth, but they believe it will only benefit their team in the long run.
“We have no seniors on the team this year, but it’s just going to make us strong next year,” PJ Cockerell, sophomore middle hitter, said. “All of us are going to stay together and keep building.”
Cockerell contributed 26 attempts and seven kills for the match against the Eagles.
Prather gave a lot of credit to Asbury.
“They played well tonight,” Prather said. “Hopefully when we see them again in October we will do a lot better.”
The Grenadiers have a positive outlook for the remainder of the season, despite this loss.
“My main goal for this season is to become a team and have a lot of chemistry,” McCartin said. “I think we are well on our way to doing that. We are going to focus on all of our games and try to fight it out until the end.”
By NIKOLETTE
LANGDON
Staff
nlangdon@umail.iu.edu