This weekend, the Plattsburgh State volleyball team heads down to Schenectady for the Union Tournament, playing at Union College (4-4) and then the Wentworth Leopards (4-1).
Tomorrow, the Cardinals (3-5) will take on Wells College (3-5) and Skidmore College (5-3), who both beat PSUC last season.
“We just have to play our game. I’m not mad if a team beats us, I’m mad if we beat ourselves,” head coach Matt Lein said when asked about the tough schedule ahead.
Last weekend the Cards lost all 12 sets in the Ducks Classic, hosted by Stevens Institute of Technology (5-3) in Hoboken, New Jersey. The team came out strong the first set against Kean University (6-3), but eventually lost the first set 22-25. After the first set, PSUC received some bad news.
“Unfortunately I came down with a severe cold that was hindering my breathing and gave me really bad congestion”, freshman setter Lauren DeVoe said.
DeVoe was unable to play the rest of the tournament.
“She’s a great setter, she works really hard”, defensive specialist Maddy Zophy said. “Allyssa Rock did a great job of taking over once she went down.”
The Cards went down in the next two sets, both 12-25. Later in the night, they played No. 22 Swarthmore College (7-1). Once again, PSUC lost in three straight sets (8-25,14-25.12-25).
“The energy was definitely low”, Zophy said, “It just got in our heads. We’re a strong team and I know we’re able to compete with teams like that.”
Despite playing ranked opposition, the Cards aimed to treat the match like any other.
“They were just another team to us”, Lein said. “I did try to prep them the whole week, we knew we were going to play some good teams this weekend. Swarthmore was very defensively sound and played a very good game”.
They lost the first match of the second day to Stevens (14-25,10-25,14-25). In their second match, against the College of Mount St. Vincent (1-4), the team showed some improvement, with PSUC losing all three sets by much closer scores (24-26,22-25,20-25)..
“We feel back to where we were last weekend”, Zophy said, “We got really down on ourselves, but we feel confident now”.
Lein echoed the view that the Cards have already bounced back mentally after the weekend.
“We started to figure out things towards the end of the weekend”, Lein said, “We were put in situations that we didn’t really practice, but once we got the flow back we started looking a lot better”.
Although there has not been any SUNYAC play yet, PSUC holds the eighth best record among conference teams, with only SUNY Oneonta and Buffalo State trailing them. Oswego holds the top record in the conference at 6-3.
Email Jack Flood at cp@cardinalpointsonline.com
