Lady Apaches swept after tough first set
#7 Molly Barnick was credited with her performance from coach Sarah Kennedy, especially with her blocks during their three-set loss to Navarro Tuesday night while #13 Gretchen Singleton contributed at the front line as well.
#3 Alex Finch tries to tip it over Navarro Lady Panther blockers during Tuesday’s match at home.
GONZALES — After fighting back and forth with Navarro the first half of the first set, everything “kind of crumbled towards the end,” as head coach Sarah Kennedy put it, with the Lady Apaches ultimately losing in three sets, (25-15, 25-10, 25-8).
Gonzales (0-5) hosted the Lady Panthers (4-2) Tuesday night and had multiple long volleys and even an early lead in the first set, but couldn’t put it together in the three-set loss.
“We started off real strong in the first few games,” Kennedy said, “we just kind of crumbled towards the end, unfortunately. Still working at playing as a team.”
The score would reach 15-14 in favor of the visiting Lady Panthers before Navarro went on a 9-0 run before Gonzales would finally break the serve. However, the Lady Panthers got their final point of the set on a kill to take the 25-15 win.
In the next two sets, the Lady Panthers would dominate, taking advantage of unforced Lady Apache errors.
“I think it was just a mental game,” Kennedy tried to explain. “Just mentally we couldn’t get over our mistakes and they, Navarro, just kept picking on us and exploiting our weaknesses.”
The Lady Apaches did show signs of greatness, especially with Molly Barnick playing up front.
“Molly had some great blocks,” Kennedy noted. “She was on tonight with her blocks and her attacks. We also had some pretty good digs from our back-row players. We were solid pretty much all the way around for that first game. But that’s another thing that we talked about, just building on what we have, building on our good blocks and building on our defense, getting in the right spots and taking care of the ball.”
In the last set, the Lady Apaches didn’t score back-to-back points until late in the game with the score ate 21-4 in favor of Navarro. Gonzales would score on a few kills in their 4-1 run before Navarro would end the game on three points to take the set 25-8.
With the Lady Apaches almost at the midway point, Kennedy notes that the team still has work to do in this district.
“[We need to] work on finishing and playing to the very last point and giving it our all, all the time,” she said. “The girls were in the locker room talking about continuing to be aggressive and get over our mistakes. The biggest thing is getting over our mistakes and moving on to the next point.”
The Lady Apaches have a chance tonight at getting over those mistakes as they take on the Lady Gobblers (1-4) at Cuero.
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