It was truly a game of inches Thursday, with Allen Community College’s volleyball team coming up just short of victory.
The Red Devils fell, 3-1, to visiting Cloud County, another tough blow for a squad scrambling to secure a spot in the upcoming postseason tournament.
The top eight Jayhawk East squads will qualify, with Allen sitting in ninth place, one-half game behind Coffeyville.
Thursday’s loss, the fourth straight for ACC, drops the Red Devils to 9-11 on the season and 7-11 in conference action, with another home match today against Highland and matches Monday at Fort Scott and Wednesday at Neosho County to wrap up the regular season.
“We’ve got some work to do,” Allen head coach Whitney Shaw said.
Thursday’s final set was a microcosm of the night as a whole, with the Red Devils unable to secure match point when serving at 24-23. Cloud’s Lizzy Pfortmiller’s kill appeared to be headed out of bounds, but hit the line and was ruled in by the linesman.
Then, with the score knotted at 24-24, an Allen kill landed just beyond the out-of-bounds line by a mere inch or two, allowing Cloud to take a 25-24 lead.
The final T-Bird point came on another kill down the middle, beyond a pair of diving Red Devil defenders, giving the point, game and match to Cloud, 25-19, 29-31, 25-15, 26-24.
“Unfortunately, it just felt pretty flat the whole night,” Shaw said. “Even the set we won, it didn’t feel like it was a good, solid win. Every point seemed so rough.”
Even in that second set, the Red Devils took the early advantage, but could not keep up the momentum. Allen led 9-5 before Cloud worked its way back to knot the proceedings at 15-15.
Kills by Ariana Compean and Adriana Santiago were sandwiched around a hitting error for Cloud, giving ACC a 24-21 lead.
But Cloud responded with three straight points, setting in place a thrilling back-and-forth in which Allen could get a point, but not two to close out the set.
Cloud then scored two straight points to take a 28-27 lead before Santiago’s kill knotted the score at 28-28. Another T-Bird hitting error gave the Red Devils a sixth set point, but that, too, ended in a service fault.
Santiago ensured there would be no collapse, however, with two straight kills for the 31-29 lead.
But the ebullience was short-lived. The T-Birds jumped out to a 4-1 lead in the third set, eventually leading 17-8 on the way to the 10-point victory.
“You would have thought we could have had more momentum after winning that set, but it didn’t happen.”
