Story by MAYAN PAZ Photos by ANNABELLE MALSAM and PARKER NISBETH
Tiger Media Network
The Fort Hays State University volleyball team wrapped up a five-game home stretch over the weekend. While the Tigers entered that stretch 9-2 overall, FHSU wasn’t able to secure a win and now find themselves 9-7 and 1-6 in the MIAA.
Washburn swept the Tigers 3-0 (25-22, 25-21, 25-15) on Friday, setting up FHSU’s weekend finale against Emporia State. The Tigers and Hornets swapped sets one through four before going to a deciding fifth set where Emporia ultimately prevailed, 15-9.
“That’s a tough loss,” FHSU Head Coach Jessica Wood-Atkins said. “The girls battled and showed some mental strength that we lacked against Washburn, and we handled ourselves better, but we have a lot to improve.”
During the game, the Tigers had nine service errors and 25 attacking errors, which according to Wood-Atkins, were things that hurt the team.
“We simply had too many errors,” she said.
Defensive specialist Kirsten Evans also addressed the team’s serving errors as something that they noticed during the game and that held them back.
“Normally don’t have as many service errors as we did today. I don’t really know what caused that, but yes, we definitely noticed it,” Evans said. “We tried to fix it, but unfortunately, we probably still had more (serving errors) than they did.”
Emporia also finished with nine service errors and also had 30 total attacking errors. However, the Hornets finished with 62 kills compared to the Tigers’ 54 and hit .211 while FHSU hit just .193 for the match.
Evans, a junior from Ottawa, stood out defensively for FHSU over the weekend. She had the most digs out of the team in both games (11 and 14) and led the team’s backcourt.
At the net, it was Gracie Rains and Cayia Stucky who led the team over the weekend. Rains had eight kills against Washburn and 13 versus Emporia. Stucky was the best feeder on the team, posting 21 assists over the Washburn’s defense and 43 against the Hornets.
The Tigers will go on the road this weekend to play Central Oklahoma on Thursday and Arkansas Fort-Smith on Saturday as they attempt to break the losing streak. For Evans, the team is focusing on looking ahead and controlling what they can control.
“We talked about our positive energy and attitude and always trying to push forward, rather than focusing on the negative and looking back,” she said.