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Mustangs fail to bounce back against Lancers

January 25, 2012
By Daniel Da Silva

After a heartbreaking four-set loss to the Waterloo Warriors last week, the Western Mustangs women’s volleyball team returned to the comfortable confines of Alumni Hall looking to right the ship. With the lowly Windsor Lancers coming to town, it should have been a comfortable night for the defending Ontario University Athletics champions.

Yet, a disappointingly flat performance allowed the Lancers, who had only won nine sets all year, to sweep the Mustangs 3-0.

“We couldn’t execute the plan. Give credit to Windsor, they played with urgency and they played like a team with nothing to lose. We have to take ownership for our performance tonight,” Dave Edwards, Mustangs head coach, said.

In what would become a recurring theme throughout the night, the Mustangs started the first set strong and led the majority of the way. However, losing a couple of long rallies seemed to break Western’s back, allowing Windsor to recover and take a lead they would not relinquish.

The Mustangs came out in the second set on fire with left side hitter Cloe Behrman serving them to a 6-2 lead. But again, showing their overall inexperience, a couple of bad breaks seemed to unsettle the team.

“I think having such a young team, some of the players haven’t been able to play through it and play a little scared, which is frustrating considering it is second semester,” Kelly Frittenburg, Mustangs middle hitter, said.

While the Mustangs played nervously, the Lancers’ front line of Kaila Seguin, Ana Vrcelj and Jennifer Ellig played full of confidence and dominated the second set, allowing the Lancers to take an insurmountable 21-14 lead.

“[Both Kaila and Ana] have struggled the past two weeks. But they both came out and played great tonight,” Lucas Hodgson, Lancers head coach, said. “I think we showed we should have a better record than we do.”

Seguin finished the night with a game-high 17 kills, two aces and two blocks. Ellig contributed 10 kills and 13 blocks while Vrcelj terrorized the middle of the floor, altering almost every attack Western threw her way.

“We knew they would give the ball to Kaila Seguin and we wanted to shut her down. But we didn’t execute the plan,” Edwards explained.

“They just passed the ball well and put it in Kaila’s hands.”

“We couldn’t pass the ball and it made it easy for them to defend us. We were too predictable in our attack,” Frittenburg added.

Western was able to make one last push in the second with the two co-captains, Frittenburg and setter Rebecca Oxland, finally combining well offensively, but the hole was far too big to climb out of. Frittenburg finished the game with four kills and two blocks while Oxland led her team with 21 assists.

“They are the only two returning starters from last year’s championship team. When we get the ball into Rebecca and Kelly’s hands, we have success. When we don’t get it to Rebecca, we are limited,” Edwards said. “We had spurts where we played well but we can’t pick and choose when we want to play.”

Western couldn’t steady themselves enough in the third set and it cost them the match. The Mustangs will continue their home stand this upcoming weekend with matches against the 7-6 McMaster Marauders and the first-place York Lions.

“We can’t sugar coat it. It was a disappointing loss. But we will learn from that and hopefully next week, we will come back to the gym and hopefully the players will play with pride and show that we are better than this,” Edwards said.

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