The Lady Colonels Volleyball team fell short in all three games played in the War Eagle Invitational tournament hosted by Auburn University in the past weekend, but followed the losses with a win against the University of Louisiana Monroe Lady Warhawks on Tuesday night. The first game of the tournament was played on Friday against Tennessee State University, a lesser conference opponent.
The attack errors stacked up fast against the Lady Colonels in the last two of five sets and eventually gave the Tigers the 3-2 win placing Nicholls at 0-1 on the first day of Auburn’s War Eagle Invitational.
Despite the loss, the Lady Colonels played close and competitive matches against the Tigers and head Volleyball Chris Laird said he saw areas for improvement, but overall, was content with team’s performance.
“We had a great opportunity to win the match, but we started too slow in the fourth set and we couldn’t recover,” Laird said. “There was a lot of nervous energy early on, but the team did a good job of working through that and winning sets two and three.”
The second match of the tournament, the Lady Colonels proved unsuccessful with another loss against SEC power Auburn.
The team scored over twenty points in the first set, but failed to see that score for the remainder of their games against Auburn. The team committed 11 errors in the second set alone, which proved to be a staggering blow to the club.
Auburn had control throughout the rest of the match against the Lady Colonels.
Chris Laird switched up the lineup in an attempt to regain the lead in the second and third sets.
Ivanina Ivanova, Chelsey Adams and Elise King were placed in the rotation, however the Lady Colonels had already fallen too much to rebound.
In their third and final match, the Lady Colonels faced off against the Troy State University Trojans. The team finished the tournament by falling to the Trojans in three sets, 30-26, 30-21, 30-28.
Laird said the final game was a learning experience for the team.
“After this game, we’ve got a clearer idea of how we can better use the players in the best situations for us to win,” Laird said.
The Lady Colonels finished the tournament last and regrouped in Thibodaux to train for the ULM game in Monroe on Tuesday night.
Both the Lady Colonels and the Lady Warhawks entered the contest with a 0-3 record.
The Lady Colonels played hard and committed far less errors in the game than they did in the Auburn tournament. The fixed mistakes would be the decisive factor that gave them the victory.
The Lady Warhawks won the first match 30-27; however, Nicholls persevered through the second match and pulled out the win 30-20. The third and fourth match were not very different with ULM winning 30-20 followed by Nicholls winning 30-23.
The final match of the night was hard fought by both teams, but Chelsea Adams made a kill that put Nicholls up, and the Lady Colonels won the match 15-12.
Rachel Spreen led all Colonels with 13 kills in the match, with a .321 hitting percentage followed by Chelsey Adams with nine kills. Aaliyah Muhammad and Chelsey Dockrey would each chip in seven kills each. The Lady Colonels will be back in action this weekend in the UNO Labor Day Classic.
