Women's Volleyball Falls to No.16 San Diego

By Tom Schreier

In a world where sports personalities often channel their inner Billy Beane, the Oakland A's manager who throws a chair and takes a bat to a stereo system in "Moneyball," the Santa Clara women's volleyball team maintained positivity throughout a tough five-set loss to No. 16 University of San Diego on Saturday.

"We love playing at home, (and) we had a great crowd today," said senior Tanya Schmidt. "The crowd helps, and we play together for each other."

The Broncos went into halftime having won the first two sets, both with scores of 25-22.

"Our goal," said redshirt sophomore Katherine Douglas, "was just to keep the same energy, and play the way we did the last two games."

"Every single time we go into halftime we think about any minor adjustments," said Head Coach Jon Wallace, who is in his 13th season.

"A visiting team that is good is going to come out strong and we need to match their energy."

Unfortunately, following the break the team lost three straight sets 23-25, 18-25 and 11-15.

The Bronco seniors along with the rest of the team realized that they have work to do in order to beat the top teams in the country.

"USD's a strong team," said Schmidt, who finished the match with 12 kills. "They picked up their offense, and we needed to match their energy and we didn't."

The third set was a hard-fought battle and both teams traded leads consistently.

However, poor serving hurt both teams throughout the contest, with a combined total of 20 service errors.

Santa Clara had escaped the first two sets unscathed by their errors, but it caught up to them in the latter half of the match.

"At the end of the day, they served out 11 times, we served out nine times," Wallace said. "We couldn't find the court today. I thought all of our serves were miss-hitting the ball, but, with all that, we still stuck in there pretty well."

San Diego ran away with the fourth set. The Toreros started the set on a 3-0 streak and won seven-straight points in the middle of the set to put a comeback victory out of reach for Santa Clara. Instead, the Broncos found themselves caught off guard by the Torero's onslaught.

"They got into a good rhythm," said Wallace. "Once they found that rhythm, they found a little more confidence, and they just kept going with it and got separation."

To go along with a renewed sense of energy, San Diego also employed a strategy to keep the ball away from the Broncos' Schmidt.

Standing 6-foot-2-inches tall, Schmidt dominated the net in the first two games. But, after halftime the Torreros passed the ball away from her, and she was less effective in the final three frames.

"(Schmidt) was having such a great match, and they were really trying to shut her down," said Wallace. "They got into the right front to help out, and so we thought we had to go away and just didn't execute as well."

Despite all the peaks and troughs the team experienced — winning the first two sets by a small margin, losing a close third set, getting blown out in the fourth set and losing in the always dramatic fifth set — they remained composed throughout the match.

The players smiled at each other in on-court meetings, and every player received a pat on the back. Even in the post-game interviews, they did not slump their shoulders nor look down while answering questions.

"They know it's a long battle," said Wallace of his team. "They know that they've got to play every point, and at any one time they can turn around a match."

"Last week we won a game being down, and we came back," Wallace said "They know that they've just got to hold strong and wait for that one momentum change to kind of get a swing."

Unfortunately, that swing never came on Saturday. Santa Clara (5-7, 0-1) will travel north on Thursday to take on the last-place Portland Pilots (6-9, 0-2).

Contact Tom Schreier at tschreier@scu.edu or (408) 551-1918.