On The Record With Megan Wong, Part V

Why us? Why on road trips? Does it really make a difference whether we’re home or away? Well it looks like it does to me. The last 3 away matches we've been unable to come up with a “W.” We were still 'low percentage' like Coach Bear wants us to be (well not quite vs. UCSD). That game we couldn’t seem to find the court. We were hitting and serving balls out of bounds and into the net; not our normal style of volleyball. With Freshman Libero Taylor Krenwinkel out early in the first game with a sprained ankel, we knew it was going to be a tough night for us.

We traveled down south knowing that UCSD was a very strong serving team. That’s how they beat CSUSB. They weren’t afraid of missing, but it didn’t matter. They were not going to let us take away the match from them on their home court. Their crowd was big, loud, and crazy, bigger than Cal Poly Pomona. We’re so used to a low key crowd, not big, loud, and crazy, so of course if affected our game. Coach Bear kept saying that we were scared because of the atmosphere and that we needed to find a way to play like we usually do. We lost games 1 and 2 with no questions asked, however, we put up a fight in game 3, but sadly lost 24-26 and we were back on the plane early the next morning. Like Coach Bear said, “When we’re on fire and playing our game, nothing can go right for our opponent. (like we did to Humboldt Wednesday nigh), but now it’s UCSD beating up on us and nothing is going our way.”

I know our team is stressing about the losses on the road, but we’re not letting down because everyone in our conference is beating each other up, opening doors for us in conference and regionals. We are not finished when we lose, we are finished when we quit and our team is not quitting. We are half way done with conference and still wanting to fight. We start the 2nd round of league this weekend facing big rivals CHICO and Stanislaus. We need a BIG crowd!!!