Playoff hopes slipping away for Lady Lancers

Lady Lancer captain Kirsten Talsma dives for the ball during a game against Trent on Saturday, Jan. 26. Photo by Taylor Renkema.

By Taylor Renkema
Courtesy of The Varsity Voice

The Lady Lancers volleyball team has dug itself into a hole it may not be able to climb out of.

Loyalist has a 6-9 record, and have lost seven of their last nine games. In six of those losses, the score was 3-0 — meaning the Lancers didn’t win a single set.

Loyalist is currently in eighth place in the league. The first-place team, Durham, has a 14-1 record. The top six teams in the East Division make it to playoffs.

The Lancers trail the sixth-place team, Seneca, by two points with five games remaining in the season.

After a 3-0 loss to Trent on Jan. 26, Loyalist’s Athletic Director Jim Buck said the team isn’t playing like they want to win, and their playoff hopes are slim.

He said his biggest frustration is seeing players act like they don’t care.

“I hated losing as an athlete and as a coach, but you see them 20 seconds after the game the girls are happy and smiling,” he said. “I don’t know how you feel good about that when you don’t perform.”

Rookie Amy Parker said sometimes all you can do is accept the loss and move on.

“It feels like if we get down on ourselves too much, we dig ourselves into a deeper hole,” she said.

Second-year player Katie Glass said often, her teammates are just masking their true emotions.

“After the game [against Trent] there were tears shed in the dressing room, for sure,” she said. “Coach asked us to go around and say what we felt after that game and there was a lot of frustration.”

Glass said playoffs are up in the air.

“You never want to say never,” she said. “There’s always a possibility it could go either way.”

Buck said the team has changed since the start of the season. He said the issue isn’t one single thing, such as service receiving or passing, but a collection of problems.

“I don’t know where this team’s focus has gone, at the start of the year they were playing well as a team and now they’re not,” he said. “They’re not communicating.”

After losing 3-0 to Durham on Jan. 18, women’s head coach Tony Clarke agreed that communication is the key issue.

“They’re having issues with hesitation,” he said. “They’re not communicating quick enough.”

Parker and Glass summed up the chemistry issue to confusion and frustration.

“It’s a lack of connection on the court,” Glass said. “Off the court, we’re great friends. On the court, we just don’t have it together right now.”