Rachel Roth
The Pierce College men’s volleyball team needed a pick-me-up.
The Brahmas were 7-0 and “playing really well,” going into conference play, but suffered their first loss of the season in their first Western State Conference match Wednesday.
To top it off, the loss came at the hands of WSC rivals, Santa Monica College.
“We just had a really rough game,” Stanislawski said. “We made a lot of errors. We had a hard time serving the court. We had 20 service errors in four games and when we decided to serve it in, it was really easy.”
With Friday’s match against El Camino College looming, Stanislawski and Assistant Coach Brad Lyans had one day to tackle the team’s issues.
They spent over an hour and a half of Thursday’s practice making their guys “serve with punishment.”
“We set a certain standard to serve a certain area a specific number of times,” Stanislawski explained. “If the players miss that target a certain number of times (they) have to run. Some guys spent an hour an a half running.”
The team also watched two hours of film to “analyze problems out on the court” play-by-play to prepare for El Camino.
One of those recurring “problems” is errors. To be successful, Lyans believes the Brahmas need to limit the number or errors committed to 12.
Shut-out victory
The Brahmas day of work paid off. They swept El Camino in three, winning 31-29, 30-21 and 30-28.
Pierce spent most of the first game of the night trying to catch the Warriors.
A kill by Opposite Jon Gurr cut El Camino’s lead to two. The Brahmas then closed out the game going on a 7-2 scoring run, with Gurr scoring five of those last seven points.
Pierce went on to win game two decisively.
The Brahmas controlled most of game three, but the Warriors battled back from a six-point-deficit, closing the gap 29-28.
“We made some subs (and) it switches up the game,” Stanislawski said. “It’s partly my fault trying to get guys involved.
They weren’t able to stop the Brahmas or Javael Boykins, opposite, who scored the match-winning point over the Warriors 30-28.
“It’s very hard to get a win on the road in this conference,” said Dick Blount, head coach of El Camino. “I give (Pierce) all the credit in the world. We’re looking forward to having them at our place.”
Gurr, who was paramount in securing game one, struggled the rest of the evening, recording almost as many errors as kills.
Stanislawski attributed Gurr’s .069 kill percentage to “setting inconsistencies,” which is something he plans to work on before their next match.
“Jon should be hitting up over .400 for us with 15-16 kills and (tonight) he hit .07 with 9 kills,” Stanislawski said after the match, “We definitely need to make sure he’s more effective in our offense.”
In Gurr’s stead, Boykins and Terry Gallbreath carried the load offensively with 13 and 12 kills respectively. Joe Finnerty and Mike Sofley each had eight, and Ryan Arthur came off the bench in game three and hit 1.000.
The Brahmas were also able to stay within Lyan’s 12 errors per game limit. They committed four in game one, seven in game two and 11 in game three.
“Huge” win
For Jackson Metichecchia, setter and co-captain, the sweeping victory was “huge.”
“We had to come out and win this game,” he said. “It pretty much no option to loose (tonight).”
For Stanislawski, Friday night’s thrashing was more about re-gaining confidence than padding the record.
“Being even this early in conference (play) is not that big of a deal but we were down and out,” Stanislawski said. “This (win) is more to pick us back up… and know that we’re a good team.”
More than anything Stanislawski hoped the win would motivate his players to “get into the gym and practice harder knowing that we’re a good team.”
“Bad things happen to good teams,” he said. “Sometimes it’s how we respond to it (that) is important. we responded well, we played pretty error free volleyball at a pretty high level.”
Next up
Pierce travels to Moorpark College on Wednesday.
To ready themselves for the Raiders, Stanislawski will have the Brahmas work on blocking and finding their “system offense,” in addition to setting.
“It’s Moorpark,” he said. “They’re our arch-rivals. We’ve gotta go out and practice hard.”
Game time is 6 p.m.
— rroth.roundupnews@gmail.com
