By Tony Burns
Sports Editor
EL DORADO - With a young volleyball squad, West Side Christian coach Milica Krsmanovic wants to get as much time on the court for her players as possible. The Lady Warriors gained five sets of experience Tuesday but fell short to Christian Ministries Academy of Hot Springs 3-2.
The Lady Conquerors rallied for a 14-25, 25-23, 22-25, 25-23, 15-8 victory at the Warrior Center.
Although West Side fell to 1-3 on the season, Krsmanovic felt the match could do her team some good down the road.
“The girls need to play. Even though we lost, I think this was a good game for my girls,” said Krsmanovic. “I think going into this tournament, they’re just going to get better. I think it’s a good way to start a season. If I have to lose, I’d rather lose at the beginning of the season than at the end of the season. Hopefully, we’ll pick it up. I’m still optimistic. It’s going to be good by the end.”
The Lady Warriors had an opportunity to win the match in four games as they held a 23-21 lead after back-to-back kills by setter Brooklin Pitard and an ace by Abby Sipes. But, a service error forced a sideout followed by a hitting error. CMA’s Bree-lynn Taylor ended the game and tied the match with consecutive aces.
The Lady Conquerors had jumped out to an 11-2 lead in that game. In Game 5, West Side couldn’t handle the jump serves of Sierra Jeans and Skyelar Vann and fell behind 13-2.
“One of those girls was doing a jump-float and you don’t really see those at this level. I’m going to be honest with you, we were not prepared for that kind of serve,” said Krsmanovic. “That is probably the toughest serve to pass in volleyball because of the movement of the ball. We did have a hard time. We’re working on it so, hopefully, next time we’ll be better.”
The Lady Warriors cut the deficit to 13-8 before the Lady Conquerors finally put the match away.
Anna Williams and Lauren Land led West Side with 15 and 12 kills, respectively. Sipes had nine aces.
West Side started the match with a decisive win in Game 1. The Lady Warriors scored 14 consecutive points on Land’s serve, including four aces. But, service errors crept into West Side’s game and proved costly the rest of the night. Those serving miscues, along with the hot serves by the Lady Conquerors, led to the slow starts in the final two games.
“That was basically it. Both sets we just started slow. We made way too many serving errors in the last part of the game,” said Krsmanovic. “In the first part of the game, we started very strong. Lauren had a streak where she was serving really good in the first set. And then, focus went down and we started making errors and that will cost you. We picked it up later but we couldn’t really do much after those errors.”