Los Medanos College faced the College of Alameda Nov. 8 and lost against the team with a score of 2-3.

 Coming into this game, the Mustangs held a 9-1 record when playing against teams in their conference, and only suffering their only loss to Solano college.

From the tip-off, both teams came out with a sense of urgency and getting right to their tasks their coaches have set up for them, with a lot of back and forth play and setting each other up to score each opportunity they could.

Although Alameda came out on top during the first set, with a score of 25-19, LMC knew they were in for a challenging game and needed to stay focused to win.

At the start of the second set, both teams remained focus and worked together and continued to set each other up for points, and this time around it was the Mustangs that got the advantage on Alameda capitalizing off of their mistakes and winning the close-set 20-25.

Within the third set, LMC caught the momentum early because of Alameda had an overwhelming amount of errors within their group early on, putting their backs against the wall and allowing LMC to be the aggressors the whole match, leading the Mustangs to a blowout win of 25-11.

Alameda started off the fourth set with the advantage and this time around it was the mustangs that were having miscommunication issues between their group, forcing coach Lue to call an early timeout, hoping that they would turn things around immediately. 

Alameda went on to score 8 straight points beating the mustangs 25-18 and at this point, the game is tied at 2 between both teams. “We knew that every point mattered. We played hard, and we just have to look forward to the next game,” said Emily Sobolik. 

At the start of the final set Alameda came out strong once again with no signs of slowing down forcing coach Lue to then again call another early timeout, and after that timeout the Mustangs pulled things together and got the game within two points (11-13) and one LMC caught their rhythm and Alameda started to lose their momentum, Alameda was forced to call a timeout to regroup and to slow LMCs run down.

Alameda ended up winning the tough battle 3 games to 2 and LMC ended up losing the heartbreaking defeat putting an end to their 4 game winning streak and also putting their conference record at 10-2 and putting their overall record at 17-13 

“It’s sad that we’re not going to get a banner this year, but we’re making it to playoffs, so we’re just going to kick ass there,” said Shelby Bryant. 

“We did not communicate very well on the court, we didn’t work very hard. It’s hard to be successful [when playing like that]. We were very flat, at times we turned it around, but were never able to maintain it,” said head coach Lou Panzella. 

Their next game will be against Yuba College Nov. 13. 

For more information on the Los Medanos women’s volleyball team: https://www.cccaasports.org/sports/wvball/2019-20/Conference/Bay_Valley/teams/losmedanos?view=gamelog.