Waynesburg Athletics On September 12th, Tuesday night the Waynesburg University volleyball team was defeated by the La Roche Red Hawks after a hot start losing in four sets at the Rudy Marisa Field House.
The Yellow Jackets came into this game on a three-game winning streak beating Penn State Shenango 3-0, and winning a pair of matches this past Saturday against Pitt Greensburg 3-1 and Penn State Greater Allegheny 3-0.
Freshman outside hitter Krista Wilson has been a consistent starter for the Yellow Jackets and expresses your thoughts and challenges she has faced early in the season.
“Being able to be on the court and play as a freshman, with girls who have playing at the college level proves to myself that I am good enough to play at the college level… I know though that I still have to work hard to maintain my spot on the court,” said Wilson.
In the first set the Yellow Jackets surged after an early La Roche lead, beating the Red Hawks 26-24. This set win ended La Roche’s current twelve set winning record as they have swept their last four opponents. Coach Emily Grossman had no idea that they had snapped their streak after the game.
“Well actually I didn’t know they had a streak, so it was fun… La Roche had a lot of energy… they competed very hard” Coach Grossman said. “We schedule this game because they are competitive and hopefully to prepare us to move into conference play pretty soon.”
The Yellow Jackets went on to fall in the next three matches despite Waynesburg’s late rally of points and were defeated by the Red Hawks.
Coach Grossman adds about what the team’s mindset is moving forward after the loss.
“It is going to be focusing on mistakes we can control on our side of the net… I think we made a lot of uncharacteristic errors in sets two, three, and four…That is something that we will look at going into practice tomorrow” said coach Grossman.
Freshman Krista Wilson talks about what the team could have done better after this loss.
“I feel like tonight we got in our heads and didn’t finish the game the way we know we can… we needed to limit our errors as a team” said Wilson. “We let La Roche go on too many runs which hurt us in the long run.”
This has been the Yellow Jackets fourth match since 2021 against La Roche and has split the last four matches each wining two matches apiece.
The team’s next game will be on Saturday September 16th as the Yellow Jackets will host the Carlow Celtics at the Rudy Marisa Fieldhouse for the first time since 2012. The start time is set for 11 a.m.