Mayra Escobedo
After seven straight loses things seemed to be looking up for the men’s volleyball team after their first season win against Santa Barbara Wednesday, but yesterday’s home game against the Santa Monica Corsairs was another loss.
Throughout most of the five games the Brahmas were not able to pull through their serving error weakness which ultimately cost them the game with Santa Monica winning 2-3.
Both teams were haunted by point errors and serving weaknesses which were a theme throughout the five games.
Coach Eddie Stanislawski made reference to serve errors saying that that is what ails them right now errors that they can control adding that the team spends one hour out of two hour practices working on their serves.
Sophomore player Josh Marbach also spoke about the teams struggles with serves throughout the game.
“Us being ourselves with serving errors” said Marbach “losing serves caused them to lose momentum” which Santa Monica took advantage of.
The Brahmas who had lost 7 of 8 games this season had been changing their line up each game this season searching for the one that worked best which seemed to be the one for Wednesday’s game against Santa Barbara so Friday’s game was the only one with the same rotation said Marbach.
The rivalry between Pierce and Santa Monica gave for an “emotional tough match” said Santa Monica coach John Mayer.
The Brahmas lost a lot of points during the first game due to long serves which put Santa Monica in the lead. The remainder of the first game was point by point. At the end Santa Monica got 4 straight points winning 27-30.
The Brahmas came in strong during the second game having a 6 point lead on Santa Monica (14-8) partly due to the Corsairs having a lot of long serves, they eventually caught up with only 1 point differences but the Brahmas regained their composure winning game two by 8 points (30-22)
Game three started point by point with no team having a consistent lead. The Brahmas at one point had a 2 point lead which prompted benched players to start chanting “ole ole ole” almost getting onto the court so coach Stanislawski had to ask them to step back as they were getting a yellow card warning.
But the Brahmas could not hold onto their lead falling back on first game errors letting Santa Monica catch up, getting a point by point third game win (27-30).
Santa Monica started off the fourth game with a 3 point lead which they lost due to many point errors. Pierce caught up and at one point had an 11 point lead over Santa Monica who seemed to regain their composure but it was too late the Brahmas had won 30-18 forcing a fifth game.
With regard to Santa Monica’s errors Mayer said “one thing goes wrong and we start to drown”
Near the peak of their fourth game lead some Pierce players started to sing “Oompa Loompa” as a notably short Santa Monica player was serving. Marbach said that they just “thought it‘d be funny” and that they “like to go crazy at the bench and have fun no matter what.”
Game five was a point by point game with both teams seesawing for the lead. Santa Monica had several point errors which caused Mayer to call a time out in which he told players to “just play” and taking Martin Chiong (#6) off the bench and putting him into the game. This seemed to do the trick for the Corsairs which came back strong catching up and eventually getting a lead on the Brahmas with Santa Monica winning 13-15.
Marbach said that the 5th game was tough and that they came on strong but missed 3 serves which Santa Monica jumped on and took the game.
When asked about the Brahmas performance Mayer said that “Pierce is always pretty intense” and that “they [the coaches] don’t accept mediocrity”.
Stanislawski also gave praise to his players saying that they “played with a lot of energy and heart”
