The Pierce College men’s volleyball team was defeated by the Santa Monica College Corsairs, Friday, March 11.
The Brahmas scored the first point in set one, but Santa Monica quickly retaliated, which caused the Brahmas to call a timeout trailing 8-3.
Middle blocker Joe Arechiga put the Brahmas down four at 19-4 but the team did not score again and they fell to the hands of Santa Monica 15-25 in the first set.
Pierce kept the second set close and traded points with the Corsairs and tied the game 9-9.
After a Brahmas timeout with a 20-19 lead, the Corsairs scored back-to-back points and eventually won the set.
Pierce’s blocking presence was made known in the third set when the team capitalized on multiple net violations by the Corsairs. One violation gave the set winning point to Pierce.
Pierce College’s head coach, Lance Walker, said that the surge of blocking led them to win that set.
“I think we won game three at the beginning when we started blocking,” Walker said. “We did a good job of taking them out of their system and getting them to start guessing themselves and starting to doubt what was going on.”
Although the Brahmas scored first in set four, Santa Monica quickly returned the point and won the fourth set 15-25. The Corsairs won the match three sets to one.
According to Walker, they lost the fourth and final set due to an energy shift. He believed they lost set four the same way they won set three. Santa Monica began blocking and exerted high energy which led them to win the game.
“We got called for a lot of net violations. Those are automatic points. We need to cut down on the unforced errors, that’s a big part of it,” Mike Soto, announcer for Pierce College volleyball said. “If you make a mistake on the court, the referee is going to stop the game, point at you and say the other team gets the point, so it’s big.”
Not only were net violations a cause of Pierce’s defeat but also lack of consistency.
“I just think that we should’ve just had better consistency within the plays of the game,” Anthony Suber, Pierce College volleyball player, said.