The Horned Frog volleyball team fell to No. 13 Colorado State at a home match Saturday afternoon.
The Frogs fought to recover hits and tips on defense, but landed short in the three-set match.
Junior Kristen Hester led the team at the net with four blocks. She believed the team could improve on moving to the ball and being more aggressive on defense, she said.
“I think we really need to focus on covering and just getting the simple balls up,” Kristen Hester said. “There were a lot of balls that I think fell that definitely should’ve been up.”
The Colorado State Rams racked up 45 total digs to top the Horned Frogs’ 38. Senior Irene Hester led the team both offensively and defensively with 11 kills and eight digs.
The Rams held the Frogs to 31 kills, while putting down 49 of their own. The match ended 18-25, 21-25 and 16-25.
Head Coach Prentice Lewis said trying to shuffle players around to compensate for injuries played a part in the team’s loss. The team lost setter Megan Munce and libero Sarah Joeckel, both juniors, to injuries early in the season.
Lewis said sophomore Meghan Horio set most of the season, but started in the first two sets against Colorado State as libero. After tallying seven digs, Horio came out as setter in the third set of the game and posted five assists.
“The reason we’ve struggled this season in general is because obviously when you lose your All-American setter, people have to move out of position and go other places,” Lewis said.
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It’s definitely just one of those things where they have got to step up as a group and say, “This is what I want to do. I’ve got to control this. I want to do this,'” Lewis said. “And they haven’t done that yet.”
Kristen Hester agreed that the position-swapping was a challenge, but said errors also played a part in the loss.
“We’ve been trying a lot of new lineups, so I think we adapted well to the different lineups that were thrown at us,” Kristen Hester said. “But obviously there were a few errors that we definitely could’ve not [made].”
After Saturday’s loss, the team holds a season record of 13-14 and 4-9 in the Mountain West Conference.
Next, they are scheduled to face Brigham Young University in Utah. The match is scheduled to begin at 8 p.m. Nov. 18.
