City College volleyball fell to .500 Friday night at the hands of the El Camino Warriors with a score of 3-0.
El Camino won the sets 25-22, 25-21 and 25-15 as the Vaqueros ended the set with nine service errors.
“I don’t think we played disciplined enough today,” said freshman middle blocker Matt Hall.
City College was led offensively by freshman outside hitter Haward Gomes with 10 kills, Hall with eight kills and sophomore outside hitter Taylor McCluskey with seven kills.
“We started off strong in the first set,” said Hall. “But things started to go wrong, we made too many errors.”
Behind Hall’s serving the Vaqueros built a 4-1 lead in the first set, but the Warriors slowly whittled the lead away until they passed City College at 18-17. After that, El Camino maintained their lead to the end of the set, 25-22.
“We had so many good looks go to waste with hitting errors, poor setting, or poor execution,” said head coach Matt Jones.
The teams kept the second set close until City College went on a 10-1 run behind the serving of sophomore middle blocker Robert Gulvin and freshman setter Jonathan Baldwin to take a 19-14 lead.
Then the Warriors got brutal and went on their own run of 11-2 behind the serving of sophomore outside hitter Nehemiah Iosia and sophomore middle blocker Peter Nordel to close out the set 25-21.
“We had leads in both of those sets,” said Jones. “If we aren’t going to execute consistently throughout the match then we’re going to let teams back in like we did.”
The Vaqueros fell behind quickly in the third set 6-1 and desperately struggled to claw their way back into the game, but the Warriors extended their lead to 10 points and never let it slip as they closed out the match 25-15.
El Camino was led by Iosia with 12 kills and Chris Phanngam with 10 kills of his own.
“It was a lack of execution across the board,” said Jones. “We’ve got four days to prepare for Pierce and we want to end the season on the right note here at home.”
City College will take on L.A. Pierce in the final home match of the season at 6 p.m. on Friday, April 15 at the Sports Pavilion.
