Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities

Roswell sweeps Portales volleyball

PORTALES— Rams volleyball spent all summer preparing for their opening match against Roswell. However, Thursday night's showdown didn't quite go as planned for Portales. Roswell swept the match in three sets, 25-21, 25-20, 25-19.

"For the first game, we started off with lots of energy, we were up. I think we were up in every set, and then we just go through a string of attack errors, or just dumb plays," Rams coach Charity Gomez explained. "I don't know what to call them. Just unfortunate things and just lose the lead.

"Like I told them, 'A team like that, that is that good, you cannot just hand them points. You've got to make them earn their points, and they didn't have to earn maybe half of their points tonight. We only hit .120, or something like that."

Portales (0-1) jumped ahead to an 8-5 lead in the first set, only to allow a 9-0 run. The Rams closed the gap from 21-14 to 24-21, but the Coyotes (2-0) managed to hold off the late charge.

The Rams then had a 13-10 lead in the second set, but that too evaporated, as they quickly fell down, 19-14. Set three was more of the same, as a 12-7 Ram lead soon became a 25-19 Roswell set victory.

"I thought we played a little bit sluggish tonight. We kind of had a hard time playing with a lot of energy, and it took us awhile to get going each set," Coyotes coach Heather Baca said. "I thought we finished decently strong, but we didn't serve the ball very well tonight— we missed too many serves, and we didn't pass the ball very well tonight. Overall, we finished strong, but we're gonna have to play with a little bit more energy."

For Gomez, missed opportunities also extended to individual players. Senior Taylee Rippee only got nine kill attempts for the night, and yet she turned eight of those into kills— and did not commit an error. According to Gomez, Rippee needs at least twice as many attempts per game for the Rams to consistently win.

"I saw a lot of good things, I really did. There was times where our serving was really good, and I felt like that kept us in the match," Gomez said. "But just too many attack errors - we're not making good decisions yet. But that comes with inexperience, and maybe I just need to get a little bit better in my philosophy of how we run our offense."

The Rams will host Clovis on Tuesday at 6:30 p.m. Gomez estimates the Rams haven't lost to the Wildcats since 2011, and she hopes that the rivalry game will spark her young team.

"I think, just because it's Clovis, it's at home, the girls will be up and ready to go," Gomez explained. "It's just, how are we gonna minimize those mistakes?

"When teams (like us) are young, you tell them, 'Oh, you're a year or two away.' But, they're right there. They just make too many of the same error over and over. That's just frustrating for me, because it's the same error we've been talking about for probably seven weeks."

 
 
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