There is a certain pride associated with being able to roll with the punches. Nothing says perseverance like getting back up after getting knocked down.
But Whitney Shaw and her Allen Community College volleyball team would prefer avoiding those challenges altogether.
Unfortunately for the Red Devils, the punches kept rolling in Wednesday night when they dropped three straight sets to Hesston College at home (13-25, 23-25, 17-25).
The sweep marked Allen’s sixth consecutive loss after a promising 3-0 start to the year. Adding insult to injury — or in this case, adding injury to insult — the Red Devils lost yet another key member of their team to a health issue.
Sarah Baker, one of Allen’s most viable options at middle blocker, tore the first and second tendons in the top of her foot during practice earlier this week. Adding Baker to a growing list of inactive players like Carly Jackson (knee) and Jessica Pollitt (knee) has been nothing short of disheartening for Shaw, a first-year head coach.
“It is extremely frustrating,” Shaw said. “But what are you going to do? You can’t do anything about it so we just got to keep grinding it out.”
With a depleted roster, Allen didn’t have enough room for error coming into its matchup with conference foe Hesston. So when the Red Devils committed 19 hitting errors, including seven from freshman Andi Dowell, the Larks were able to take advantage from the very first set.
After an opening set with more errors (six) than kills (five), Allen did find a way to settle down and become a little more competitive by reducing its own mistakes.
The second set was a back-and-forth contest that appeared to lean toward the Red Devils until the Larks charged back late to take the last few points and the set by a score of 25-23.
“We didn’t finish with the opportunity that we had,” Shaw said.
As a result, Hesston took a daunting 2-0 lead into the final set and put Allen away to seal the victory and the sweep.
Although the loss is disappointing, Shaw said a bright side is that many of the Red Devils’ mishaps are of their own doing, so they can be fixed with more practice. And Shaw’s players are doing just that: Putting in a little overtime to correct what’s broken.
“Outside of regular two-hour practice, players have been coming in on their own,” Shaw said. “And I really think that has helped some people.”
Allen now has a week until its next game against Kansas City Kansas Community College on Wednesday, which is the longest break between contests since the season started. So Shaw hopes the extra time will allow the Red Devils to start cleaning up their game and healing some nagging injuries.
“We just keep talking about starting to pull our own weight,” Shaw said, “because it’s going to take all of us and we’re going to have to have more heart than other teams, especially in these rough times.”
Allen takes another hit
