Sometimes it’s the little mistakes that come back to haunt you, as was the case for the Milpitas High girls volleyball team on Thursday night.
Although the Lady Trojans played well throughout the night, costly defensive mistakes, passing errors, and missed serves led to Milpitas’ 3-1 loss to Live Oak High-Morgan Hill.
Milpitas won the first set 25-18, but Live Oak took control the rest of the evening and won the next three games, 25-20, 25-16, and 25-16 to take the match 3-1. The loss dropped the Lady Trojans’ record to 3-4 on the season.
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Before Thursday’s defeat, Milpitas was on a two-match winning streak after back-to-back wins during the team’s final two matches over the weekend. Milpitas took part in the Spikefest I tournament on Saturday, finishing with a record of 2-3 during the weekend tourney at Independence High-San Jose.
The Lady Trojans came out flat and had trouble getting the ball over the net in the first game, but once the home team started earning points, they found their groove and took control of the game.
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In each of the last three games, the Lady Trojans gave up big leads early and while they made the Acorns sweat, the home team’s comebacks came a little too late in each game.
Milpitas Coach Jeff Lamb said the Acorns’ early leads made it harder for the Lady Trojans to keep their confidence and stay in the games.
“We just had lapses tonight,” said Coach Lamb. “We were letting them get long runs on us and lead by big amounts of points. When they did that, we put our heads down.”
Coach Lamb said his young team will need to work on their mental toughness as the season goes on.
Junior Pilar Ferguson said Coach Lamb told the team to keep playing hard, no matter what the score was.
“No one can quit out there,” Ferguson said. “Everyone has to keep playing. I’ve seen too many games where the other team comes back to win even though it’s game point.”
Ferguson was one of the bright spots for Milpitas on the night. The junior led the team with 11 kills and was a spark of energy each time she was on the court.
“She did a really good job tonight,” Lamb said. “She definitely carried us for a while out there. She had a couple bad plays early on, but she worked her way out of it and got us some points.”
The Lady Trojans won’t have much time to worry about Thursday’s loss as they look to improve their record next week with two games on the road.
On Tuesday, the Lady Trojans head to Leland High-San Jose and will play at Santa Teresa-San Jose on Wednesday.
