Women’s volleyball goes winless on weekend

Playing for the first time in two weeks after having a pair of matches postponed due to opposing teams coming down with H1N1, the Wilfrid Laurier Golden Hawks’ women’s volleyball team went 0-2 over the weekend, losing to the Guelph Gryphons and the McMaster Marauders. With the two defeats, the Hawks have now lost three matches in a row after winning three straight earlier in the month.
“I think it really boils down to consistency,” said head coach Luke Snider of the Hawks’ recent struggles. “We’ve shown that we can compete at a very high level in all aspects of the game, but it’s not good enough to only do that some of the time.”
In Friday’s game, the Hawks fell in straight sets to the Gryphons, dropping their record to 3-3.
Looking to rebound against the Marauders on Saturday night, the Hawks were guilty of several mental errors in the first two sets, losing both. However, in the third set, the Hawks came out strong, grinding out a tight win 25-23. In the fourth, the Hawks would go on to win another tight set and send the game to a deciding fifth set, where they lost 15-9.
“I have no problems losing when we play well, so I have no problems with what happened for half of today’s match,” said Snider. “We’re still showing signs of inconsistency and we lacked execution at important times. But a real positive today was that after playing the way we did in the first two sets, we were able to come back and play well enough to take it to five sets.”
According to Snider, a large part of the Hawks’ struggles can be chalked up to inexperience.
“We’re still a pretty young team, and we’re still learning how to handle ourselves in tough situations,” he said. “I thought we made a lot of improvements today, but obviously it wasn’t enough.”
The Hawks now sit below .500 at 3-4 and look to break their three-game losing streak this weekend when they travel to Toronto to take on Ryerson and York.
“If we continue to play so inconsistently we’re going only going to keep losing,” said Snider. “But if we can play like we know we’re capable of, with more consistentcy, I think we’ll win a lot of matches this year.”