OAKVILLE, Ont. -- Playing their first games of the second half in less than 24 hours, the Sheridan Bruins women's volleyball team (5-6 OCAA) dropped a five-setter to Redeemer and fell 3-0 to Humber.
"We had a pretty good start to the match, we were serving tough, passing well so that allowed us to get control on our side of the net," head coach Scott Hunt said after Friday's loss to Redeemer. "In the third set, Redeemer started to pick up their play a bit, the set was pretty close and then the gym started to fill up with fans, they got pretty loud and we didn't respond well to that atmosphere. We were working hard and playing tough, but we just weren't making the best decisions at times."
The Double-Blue claimed the first two sets with scores of 25-22 and 25-15 before the home side rallied with 25-23 and 27-25 wins to force a fifth set, which they won 15-13.
Katelyn Long (12 points) and Tara Aune (10 points) both hit double figures in a balanced Sheridan attack that produced 53 points of total offence.
The Lady Bruins got off to a slow start against Humber, dropping the opening set 25-12.
After falling into an early hole in the second they began to claw their way back before losing 25-19 and were closed out 25-18 in the third.
"I thought we worked hard, we just weren't able to execute skills consistently to compete with them," Hunt said following the loss. "They're a very physically team and very skilled, so you have to be pretty sharp to be able to compete with them and we didn't start the match playing overly consistent and then we started to get a bit better, picked up our play and compete with them."
After playing on twice in less than 24 hours, the club now has a full week to prepare for another back-to-back, as they host Cambrian on January 21 (6pm) and Boreal on January 22 (1pm).
"We just need to be more consistent in executing skills," Hunt said of what they will look to work on leading up to next weekend. "We're working hard, we're aggressive, we're just not executing the skills consistently enough in order to compete with the top teams right now. And that needs to be an area we improve."
