Despite playing their hearts out, the Weber State Wildcat women’s volleyball team lost three straight home games.
“We got a bag of mixed emotions I think, but I am proud of the way we worked. I’ve been begging these kids to work hard for the last two and half weeks and they have been,” WSU Head Coach Jeremiah Larsen said. “Today they finally showed up, and it’s nice to see.”
On Thursday, the Idaho Vandals got to work scoring quickly and winning the first set. The Wildcats came back strong for the second set scoring, 25-22. However, as the game went on the Vandals took the win. The Vandals won by three sets compared to the Wildcats’ single set.
Ciera Borho, who plays outside hitter and is a junior at Weber State, had eight kills on the night. Junior Andrea Hale, another outside hitter, was another stand out player for the team adding 13 kills for the night.
“It was good, we put a lot of passion into tonight’s game and we passed really well, just little things that held us back, but it was a good team effort tonight,” says Borho. “We proved ourselves and gained a lot of respect tonight.”
“I loved it, the passion was there it was amazing, we played great,” Hale said. “We’re improving, but we can improve on our serving and passing. But we got it, we’re there.”
On Saturday, the team faced off against Eastern Washington University where the team struggled to get anything going and fell 3-0 to the eagles.
As a team, they performed well with three Wildcats—Borho, Amada Varley and Megan Thompson—having five kills apiece. Thompson also added 5 attacks and senior Audrey Hunter Had a high scoring percentage for the night with .800 and no errors.
“We need to stop letting things get in the way of our goals of working hard and start being dedicated to winning,” Larsen said in a statement “Until we learn to do that we will not make any progress towards consistency.”
On Monday night, the team took on in-state rival Utah Valley University where, despite their efforts, they fell to the Wolverines in three quick sets.
The team came out hot, gaining a lead that lasted until the Wolverines built momentum, tying up the first set at 16 points apiece. Both teams stayed neck and neck for the rest of the set, but WSU ceded the set to UVU with a score of 25-21.
The second set started with the Wildcats behind early and, despite mounting a comeback, fell 25-22. In the third set, the Wildcats kept it locked up for the majority of the match and narrowly lost on a Wildcat error 29-27.
Borho and Thompson led the team with 12 kills. as Hunter again held the lead percentage at .714. Taylor Christensen-Kinikini had 37 assists for the team and helped keep the stability for the team during the game.
The team will return to the court this weekend as they host Southern Utah and Northern Arizona before heading on the final road trip of the season. The games are on Oct. 29 and Oct. 31 and will start at 7 p.m.
