With the Patagonia High volleyball team about to enter the teeth of its schedule, maybe Tuesday night’s match with Lourdes Catholic will serve as a much-needed wakeup call.
The Lobos remained undefeated but were far from their best in the 25-13, 25-17, 25-19 victory over the visiting Warriors. The win elevated their record to 7-0 in official matches (13-2 counting tournament play), and they’ve yet to lose even a single set to any of the seven non-tournament opponents, but they realize they’ll need to pick up their level of play for next week’s home games versus 1A South region rivals St. David and The Gregory School.
St. David is the three-time defending region champion and has won 10 consecutive matches against the Lobos, dating back to 2016, while Gregory has a 6-0 record and has also finished ahead of Patagonia in the region standings for the past two seasons.
“Very sloppy,” was coach Brenda Somoza’s assessment of Tuesday’s victory. “I’m very disappointed. I think [we] just felt comfortable, we got overconfident, thought we were going to win and didn’t go out there as strong as we could have.”
The Lobos struggled in multiple ways: service errors, sloppy passing, and difficulty in putting away their kills against Lourdes’ blockers.
“We could have done a lot better,” senior Brianna Majalca said. “Our serving and our passing were not it, and we need to practice on when they’re blocking us.
“We just let the ball drop instead of picking it up. We need to be on our toes for that, and we need to do better at getting our serves in. We do a lot of serving in practice, and there should be no reason why we miss so many serves.”
The Lobos will get one more chance to fine-tune their game prior to next week’s key region matches, when they compete as one of the smallest schools in the Epic Tourneys Girls Volleyball Invite in Tempe on Friday and Saturday. The tournament brings together schools from all classifications in Arizona and will be held at three different venues.
Then comes three consecutive home matches: Tuesday, Sept. 23, vs. St. David; Friday, Sept. 26, vs. Gregory; and Tuesday, Sept. 30, vs. Valley Union.
“Those are big games that we need to focus on,” Majalca said.
Will the Lobos be ready for the challenge?
“Yes we will,” Majalca said. “After this week of practice, yes we will.”