Four seasons ago the Waynesburg University volleyball team lost to Penn State Altoona 3-1. Four years later, the Yellow Jackets lost by the same score. Despite falling short, head coach Hayley Kirby wasn’t discouraged with how her team performed.
This was one of the better games we played,” Kirby said. “We just made some stupid errors at bad times, but I am not super upset with that loss because I think we did good things.”
Going into the match, Kirby said the team’s strategy was to attack the lines. Unfortunately, the plan didn’t work.
“They leave the line wide open and I think we really attacked that at the during the second set because they left a big corner in the back court,” Kirby said. “So, on the outsides I had them hit the line a lot. It worked, and then they figured it out and fixed their side.”
Penn State Altoona won the first set in dominating fashion, 25-14. Waynesburg battled back to win a tightly contested second set 25-23, tying the match 1-1. Penn State Altoona won set three, 25-20. Waynesburg fell behind by 10 in the fourth set and tried to come back, but it came up short losing 25-19.
“There was a lot of good things that happened and I think we can take those good things and move on and use them in our next match,” Kirby said. “Our defense overall did pretty well too.”
Kirby was particularly impressed by Mya Brooks. Brooks had nine kills and two aces on the night.
“Mya Brooks has played all the way around for the first time ever and I think she did really well,” Kirby said. “She struggled a little bit at the beginning, but I think once she got her flow she started doing well.”
Kirby also felt Alexis Phillips and freshman Kayla Stohon played well. Stohon had eight kills, two aces and one block.Phillips added two kills.
“Kayla Stohon was great, they really couldn’t anything to stop her, so she was awesome,” Kirby said. “Alexis Phillips was setting amazingly, she was doing a great job and pumping everybody up.”
Waynesburg is now 2-12 overall and still 0-4 in conference play. The next match for the Yellow Jackets is at Westminster on Saturday, Oct. 5. The Titans are 15-1 overall and 4-0 in the PAC. For Kirby, the Yellow Jackets need to play like a team that has everything to gain.
“I think we need to use this match [heading into the next one], we played well and use [this game] against Westminster,” Kirby said. “Obviously, Westminster is really good,” she said.. “I don’t think that we have anything to be intimidated by and I just don’t think that we need to go into a game thinking we are going to lose.”