ROCHESTER — The Rochester volleyball team found itself a set away from a win after three at home against Shelton on Tuesday, but saw things go wrong fast in a 25-23, 24-26, 20-25, 25-15, 15-4 loss in 2A EvCo play.
“We get into slumps that we can’t get ourselves out of,” Rochester head coach Bridget Morris said. “I only have two timeouts, I can’t keep taking timeouts to reset this, (they) have to be able to do it, and they just for whatever reason can’t reset on the court.”
After playing its best set of the match in the third, the slump quickly became a thing for the Warriors, who faced a double-digit gap early in what ended up being a 10-point loss in the fourth. From there, the fifth set only got rougher, with the Highclimbers ending things on a 13-2 run after an early 2-2 tie.
It was a bit odd of a finish for a match that started off close the whole way. Rochester led a tight first set as late as 21-20 before Shelton ended it on a 5-2 rally. The second was more of the same, with the key exception being that the Warriors ended up on the right side of things.
The Warriors hit their stride early in the third, racing out to a 17-10 lead. Shelton came back, but Roisin Stull put the Highclimbers away at the service line, ripping off three of her six aces in the set as part of four-point run to get the hosts to set point.
Stull added a team-high 12 kills to her final line. Hailey Angwood had four, and Isabella Masias added three.
But for much of the night, the Warriors had troubles putting together full possessions from pass to set to spike, sending more balls over the net by way of pushes or free balls than hard hits.
“I think the biggest thing is we’ve got to get the passes to target,” Morris said. “We’re not getting sets to be able to get good hands on it. That’s our biggest thing. In serve receive, we’ve gotten better at getting the ball to target, but on defense we’re not. We’ve got to be able to get the ball to sets so they can get up something for our hitters. Because we don’t have the tallest hitters, so they’ve got to have a good set.”
Libero Cheyenne Justice led Rochester with 14 digs; Kassidy Byrd had 10. Madison Angwood dished out 10 assists to go along with three aces, while Lauren Rotter had three aces of her own.
Rochester will face off against Tumwater next Tuesday.
