The Pagosa Springs High School Lady Pirate volleyball team went 1-1 over the last week, falling prey to the Centauri Falcons before rebounding to defeat the Kirtland Central Broncos.
The Lady Pirates welcomed the Falcons to town the afternoon of Sept. 21 following a week of homecoming festivities
The Falcons won in three sets: 25-20, 25-17 and 25-23.
“Centauri was a rough game,” coach Katie Lorenzen said. “Homecoming week is just a ton of distractions and exhaustion, and you could just see how tired the girls were in practice that week and that game.”
She added another coach pointed out in the locker room that, even in the third set when the score was tied or the Lady Pirates were leading you wouldn’t have guessed it from their body language.
“There was just not the oomph to push it to a fourth set, to win that, dig deep and win it,” she said. “So, it was clearly not our best, and it can definitely be frustrating as a coach when you’re dealing with these outside events that shouldn’t affect us so much, but it definitely did that week.”
Lorenzen noted several of the team’s players were hurting after powder puff football, but the team just had to deal with it.
“It was not at all even close to our best showing,” she said.
The Lady Pirates logged 17 kills in the affair, with Cadence Kerns leading with six, followed by five from Aspen Pitcher and four from Dawson Iverson.
The team had 13 attack errors.
The Lady Pirates logged two serving aces, one by Sophia Sottek and one by Pitcher.
The team had 44 serving points, led by 15 from Lexi Campbell.
The Lady Pirates had three total blocks, with Pitcher logging a solo block and two assisted blocks. Kerns and Iverson each had an assisted block.
Sottek led the team in digs with 13 of the team’s 45, with Pitcher contributing 10.
Sottek led the team with 11 of the 14 assists in the game.
Pitcher, Campbell and Charity Domingo each had 16 of he team’s 54 total serve receptions.
The team had seven serve reception errors.
The Lady Pirates, however, rebounded Tuesday evening when they hosted the Broncos from New Mexico.
“Tonight was a completely different team against Kirtland Central,” Lorenzen said after the game, adding the Lady Pirates haven’t played the Broncos in her six years coaching with the team and it was nice to see a different team.
The Lady Pirates won in three sets: 25-16, 25-21 and 29-27.
“We just had a really strong performance,” the coach said. “We coaches have been nagging on the girls all season about their huddle energy and coming together better, and they actually did it tonight and held a huddle and made sure everyone was in there, and it completely changes the energy.”
Lorenzen added the team came out “super strong” against the Broncos behind Campbell’s serves.
“She was behind the service line the most tonight with really tough serves that gave us long streaks of points, which was awesome,” she said, adding it allowed the Lady Pirates to build a big lead right off the bat and gave the Lady Pirates momentum to carry them and build confidence.
The coach also highlighted the team’s passing.
“I think our passing was really strong, which made it nice and easy for Sophia to set all of her hitters,” she said.
She also noted Hayden Peterson “really did well” hitting from the front row, had good off-block reactions and made moves for the ball from the back row to keep the ball in play as the team mixed things up.
“That was awesome,” she said.
Lorenzen added the team’s play at the net was really good in the game, with the team “putting up some blocks and getting some touches.”
She added, “And our back-row defense was, for the most part, just making big moves and not hesitating, so that was fun to see. And then, of course, the best part was winning the game in three, going into extra points.”
Lorenzen highlighted the Lady Pirates were down 23-18 in the third set, then pushed into extra points.
“To see the girls really dig deep and show some resilience and grit and belief that they could win I think was a big milestone ... for us this year,” she said, adding, “No one was playing timid or scared.”
She added it was also nice for the seniors to get the win at home, with the team having only two more home games this season.
Stats for the game were not available by press time Wednesday.
The Lady Pirates’ next matchup will be on Tuesday, Oct. 1, in Cortez, where they’ll take on the Montezuma-Cortez Panthers.
The Lady Pirates, who are 6-6 on the season and 1-3 in league play, previously defeated the Panthers 3-1 at home on Sept. 14.
The Panthers are 7-10 on the season and 1-1 in league play.
randi@pagosasun.com
