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Volleyball team loses to Lawrence Tech

The MCCC volleyball club had high hopes after jumping out to a 3-0 lead against Lawrence Tech, who they had already beaten twice in pool play.

However, it went downhill from there. In the first set Lawrence Tech grabbed a six-point lead to make it 12-6.

MCCC clawed back, but still lost 25-23.

The second set was more lopsided. The players started showing their frustration when Lawrence Tech jumped on MCCC early to make it 10-6.

After Lawrence Tech took a 17-9 lead, MCCC players, such as Amelia Contreras, tried to rally the troops and MCCC went on a 5-1 run to close the gap to 18-14.

That was not enough. They lost the set 25-16 to Lawrence Tech, who would win the silver bracket.

“It was just silly mental errors that brought us down that game,” MCCC volleyball player Candace Salliote said.

“We missed serves, we sped passes, and they could not come together as far as vocal communication with the entire team,” MCCC volleyball coach Scott Barbe said.

In pool play, MCCC finished with a record of 3-3. That earned them a six-seed and a first round bye in the ten-team tournament.

“We played Lawrence Tech in pool play, and we beat them in two games and we were really aggressive to the ball and we were at a high communication level,” Barbe said.

Barbe said the wins versus Lawrence Tech were impressive because they plan on joining the NAIA athletic league next season.

While most of the MCCC volleyball players are returning next season, Salliote said it may have been her last tournament.

Most of the players and coaches have agreed throughout the season that Salliote is the leader of the team.

She said there was no sadness from it being her last tournment, since there were no regrets.

“We’ve come a long way, since we started, so I’m pretty confident we did a good job,” Salliote said.

Barbe pointed to first-year player Amelia Contreras as the most valuable player for MCCC for the day.

“She was the most consistent player today,” Barbe said.

Barbe said it’s unusual to have so many players on a college team who don’t have too much experience in the collegiate sport they’re participating in.

His goal is to have 12 people on his roster with a good amount of experience in the coming seasons.

Having extra numbers could have benefited MCCC in the tournament, because of Jessica Dover was injured, which meant the roster was down to seven players.

Barbe is still optimistic after having aspirations of winning the Silver Medal bracket.

“I think that they’ve accomplished a lot as far as every single one of them increasing their level of play. We’ve taken girls who’ve never played the game before and turned them into volleyball players,” Barbe said.

While the MCCC volleyball club is done with tournaments for this season they still have league games to finish it out.

“We hope to finish strong,” Barbe also said, “Hopefully we’ll have a winning end to the season.”

Look for Jeff Papworth’s Twitter page at http://twitter.com/JeffPapworth