March 19, 2024

Woes continue for PCM Mustangs

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MONROE – Momentum avoided Prairie City-Monroe Thursday night.

For the second match in a row, PCM couldn’t turn a first-set victory into anything else. The Mustangs’ play faltered in the second and then bottomed out in the third as visiting Gilbert topped the host team in four sets, 25-22, 19-25, 12-25, 17-25.

“We come out playing hard and really good, smart volleyball,” PCM head coach Mollie Keitges said. “And then, I guess, we just don’t know how to maintain the energy.

“If we could explain it, we’d maybe not have this problem. They just come out hard and fired up and it just deflates.”

The Mustangs grabbed an early 4-1 lead in a back-and-forth first set in which neither team ever led by more than four points.

Parity quickly turned into commanding leads in the next two sets. Tiger senior Alex Miner asserted herself in the second as she recorded a kill and two blocks that led directly to points, helping Gilbert to a 9-2 advantage and causing PCM to call a timeout.

Then in the third, Gilbert built an 11-1 lead despite another timeout from the Mustangs after they trailed, 5-1.

“We went through the same thing the last game on Tuesday (against South Hamilton),” PCM sophomore Katie Vande Wall said. “I think we were so excited at the beginning just to be playing volleyball and we do well — all of our hits are on, all of our back row is doing well, our team is just together — and then I think the second game … we think they should lay down and give us the ball and that doesn’t happen obviously.”

Keitges pointed to a couple of areas that hurt the Mustangs as Gilbert built its leads in the second and third sets — serve-receive passing and “really silly errors.”

“I’m ok with aggressive hitting errors, if they’re swinging hard at balls and they’re going out of bounds,” she said, “but when they’re standing just to get it over and hit it in the net, those are the points we just can’t give away.”

As much as PCM struggled from self-inflicted errors, the Mustangs also fell victim to two of the better performances by Gilbert’s Miner and Amia Davis this season. Miner recorded 16 kills and Davis six blocks, both numbers two shy of each players’ season high.

Miner appeared undefendable at times, crushing balls by PCM’s blockers.

“There’s not a lot you can do to defend a kid like that,” Keitges said. “What you need to do, though, is not give them easy stuff over so they can’t get an easy pass-set-hit. We need to hit things more aggressively to them so that they’re maybe scrambling a little bit more so that they’re not pass-set-hit right back at us.

Senior Courtney Van Houweling led PCM with 12 kills and while sophomore Kayla Jennings contributed 16 assists.

Van Houweling shared her coach’s urge for more aggressive hitting.

“We need to hit more balls over at them,” she said, “instead of letting them hit at us.”

Contact Sports Writer Ben Schuff at (641) 792-3121 Ext. 6536 or at bschuff@newtondailynews.com.