A rough season came to a disappointing end on Monday for the Allen Community College volleyball team.
The Lady Devils ended their season by getting swept 3-0 by Friends Universitys junior varsity squad.
Allen was in it for all of both of the first two sets but key mistakes down the stretch such as missing on 12 serves throughout the match sealed their fate.
With the loss, the Lady Devils fall to 6-23 which is their best record since they won nine matches back in 2015.
I made the mistake of giving them three days off leading up to today, head coach Whitney Shaw said. We practiced on Sunday and it was pretty much the exact reflection of today. I thought wed be able to handle it, considering how late we were in the season, but apparently not.
Allen had a 15-9 lead in set one before Friends called the timeout that changed the course of the whole match.
After that, the Falcons fought their way back and tied it at 19. From there, the teams would tie nine more times before Friends was able to string three points together to take the set 32-30.
Set two was even closer. Allen trailed by four early on but fought back for to tie it up at 22. The teams tied three more times before Friends narrowly escaped again with a 26-24 win.
By set three the fight was gone. Friends took an early 7-1 lead and despite some push by the Lady Devils to get things within five at 12-7, Friends closed out with a 13-6 run to grab the set and the match at 25-13.
We just didnt play how were able to play, Shaw said. Weve played much better teams and competed better than that. If we played half as bad as we played today, we wouldve won easily.
After the match, Shaw wanted to be sure to thank her four sophomores for their help in leading the team and for the fact that They stuck it out and improved immensely.
The Lady Devils lose Holly Shinn, Channing DeMers, Emily Fritz and Miranda Golden. With such a small sophomore class departing, Shaw hopes that her freshman core will stick around and continue to improve into next season.
Now that its over, we can only look ahead, Shaw said. I feel were really set if we can get the freshmen to return that we need to return then well have a good core moving forward. Weve have a lot of good recruits come in and weve had some new recruits commit so if we can keep our core, I feel like we can really continue to grow. Next August will be here again before we know it.
