The Crested Butte News Serving the Gunnison Valley since 1999
Drop two big league matches
With the number of volleyball players down by approximately 50 percent because of fall break, the remaining smaller roster of committed players hit the road last weekend to play two crucial matches that would have a significant effect on final league and district standings.
On Friday, October 15 the team traveled to Westcliffe to play district opponent the Custer County Bobcats. Custer County’s record indicated that the Bobcat team, like the Titans, has struggled with playing consistently. Unfortunately, the Titans appeared to be suffering from break-brain and just could not seem to muster up any enthusiasm and never found a rhythm in the match, playing well below their potential.
The Titans passed inconsistently and had too many mental errors to ever challenge the Bobcats. The Titans dropped the first set 18-25. The second set the Titans could only muster two 3-point runs, while one Bobcat server was able to serve eight straight points making it difficult to stage any kind of comeback. The Titans lost the second set 16-25.
In the third set, mental errors went from bad to worse with the Titans missing four of their first six serves and lost the set 11-25. The team statistics for the match show how off the Titans played on the evening as they were only able to muster up seven total kills for the entire match and had 13 missed serves.
The next morning an even smaller Titan roster jumped back on the bus and headed to Sargent. The Farmers are in second place and have an experienced senior laden team that has been gaining momentum and confidence in after battling the number one undefeated LaVeta squad to a five set match.
Meanwhile the Titans had only six varsity players in uniform and that provided an opportunity for freshman Lindsay Kopf jump up to the varsity roster and start as an outside hitter. In her first varsity match, Lindsay played with confidence and racked up several good stats including one strong kill and one solo block.
Crested Butte played harder and showed more life than the prior evening blocking and serving better but still struggled passing and hitting consistently.
Karleigh Dean and Toni Brown led the team in kills and sophomore Sara Sherman racked up seven blocks. Defensively, Dean, junior Natalie Bowen and senior defensive specialist Asya Stillo picked up several key digs against the hard-hitting Farmers. The Titans lost the match, 15-25, 20-25 and 12-25. While losing in three straight sets, the Titans were able to play with more enthusiasm, which was encouraging.
With a 7-11 overall record, the Titans have one league match remaining against at Antonito on Friday. League play wraps up on Saturday with District Seeding meeting to occur on Sunday, October 24. As of press time, the coaches do not have all the other teams’ records available and are assuming that the Titans will be hitting the road for the first district pigtail match on Monday, October 25 rather than being able to host the first district match. With 11 teams in the District this year, each team will need to win three pigtail matches to qualify for the final district tournament.
The final district tournament hosted by Custer County on Friday, October 29 has the top four teams square off in a round robin format to determine the top two teams that would then continue to the regional tournament.
