The Allen Community College volleyball team stumbled to Neosho Community College on Wednesday, three sets to one.
The Lady Red Devils fought hard to get their first set victory, 25-22, but then dropped their next three sets. Neosho won by scores of 25-13, 25-18 and 25-19.
Allen had 16 kills in their opening set victory. The next three sets saw the Lady Red Devils knock seven, 11 and 10 digs, respectively.
“Everything we knew about Neosho and everything we wanted to do against Neosho we did do in the first set,” said Allen head coach Whitney Shaw. “Then we just didn’t do those same things in the second, third and fourth sets. Serve-receive is where we ended up struggling.”
Gabriela Dominguez led Allen on the attack with 12 kills, followed by Alycia Shaw and Veronica Agostini’s nine kills apiece. Katherine Harris knocked four digs while Lexi Deweese and Nadia Gallegos ripped three kills apiece.
Dominguez led in scoring with 12 points, followed by Agostini and Shaw’s 11 points apiece. Deweese hit 5.5 points while Harris ripped 4.5 points and Gallegos and Becerra each totaled four points.
“Early in the season we were pretty strong passers. As of lately I haven’t felt like that,” Shaw said. “Serve-receive is really about repetition and discipline so maybe we’re not doing enough of that. We just weren’t passing very well.”
Sofia Otero led at the serving line with 24 aces, in front of Guilia Gonclaves’s 12 aces and Andrea Maldonado’s three aces.
Defensively, Maldonado led with 20 digs while Otero and Agostini knocked 13 digs apiece. Dominguez also managed 10 digs and Shaw made seven. Arlette Becerra, Shaw, Gallegos and Agostini each made one solo block.
“It doesn’t have to be a perfect ball, but it has to be a ball we can run at least two of our hitters off of,” said Shaw. “Passing needs to be better. We needed to continue what we’ve started, carrying over what we did in the first set to the second set. We made more errors.”
Becerra and Shaw had two block assists.
Allen will host Arlington Baptist for their final home match of the season on Friday at 6 p.m.
