On Wednesday, March 27, the Matadors faced off against Harker High School, ultimately losing 3-0. Although MVHS started off with a strong serve, winning the first point of the game, HHS quickly took the lead, ending the first timeout with a score of 17-13. After a series of intense rallies, the Matadors brought the score back up to 21-17. However, MVHS was unable to pull ahead completely, ending the first set with a final score of 25-21.
During the second set, HHS established an early lead, scoring the first two points and maintaining its lead. Although the Matadors fought back through intense rallies, its defense was unable to receive and pass the serves and hits from HHS.
While Monta Vista’s initial serve in the third set didn’t make it over, it was able to quickly catch up to HHS, going into the second timeout of the game with a score of 10-6. As the team’s defense was able to dig the hits and serves that HHS made, the Matadors made a comeback, tying the game 22-22. However, in the last three points of the game, MVHS was unable to score, allowing HHS to pull ahead and win the set 25-22 and the game 3-0.
Junior and setter Praneel Shah attributes the loss to the players letting prior mistakes get in their heads and affect their performance for the rest of the game. Shah believes that the team “wasn’t able to move on from our mistakes, and we let that get to our success.”
Additionally, senior and opposite hitter Henry Hu believes that the game was an unfortunate turn from the last game against Saint Francis, where the team narrowly lost 2-1, allowing the Matadors to see its full potential and what it could achieve this season.
“Today was slightly disappointing because we played against Saint Francis this weekend, who is top 5 in NorCal, and it was a really close game,” Hu said. “So, our loss today was especially disappointing for us. I think we were expecting a closer game and that just didn’t happen today.”
Despite the loss, both Hu and Shah believed that they both played pretty well individually, but as Shah believes, “volleyball isn’t an individual sport, so it doesn’t matter how I do but rather the team as a whole.”
Although Shah is proud of the team for the game it played, he says there are things that the team can do together to improve how they play in future games.
“I think we should go back to practice and work on the little things that we spent so much time on and then maybe on the game on Friday, we can perform better,” Shah said. “Some of the little things include serving the ball at the location Coach gives us, playing defense stronger and remembering what Coach tells us during the game. Sometimes we bring far too much as a team and we need to work on being mentally in the game and focusing.”
