The Lady Vikes fell to the Mountain View Spartans 3-2 on Tuesday night. Tuesday’s game gives the Vikings a 1-5 league record.

Assistant Coach Hillary Ford points to the slow starts that the Vikings had in some of the sets as the reason for the team’s loss.

“I think that if you look at each game and the scores in the beginning I think that the games we lost we started down in a pretty big ditch,” Ford said. “We have some great comebacks, but it’s really hard to come back when you start that slow.”

Katie Passarello (`17) attributed the loss both to poor service reception and scoring slumps.

“I think it was a tough match,” Passarello said. “Both teams had some good runs. I think that we got stuck on serve-receive and we got into a few ruts.”

The Vikings trailed three points behind the Spartans for much of the first set. Although the Vikings temporarily but gained a 19-18 lead after an ace from Kabria Dame (`15), the Spartans went on to win the set 25-21.

In the second set, the Lady Vikes dominated the Spartans 25-18, with Anna Dukovic (`15) leading the team in kills.

Ford believes that the Vikings’ biggest downfall in the game was their lack of consist play.

“I think that the main thing that we need to work on is consistency,” Ford said. “I think that we have some amazing moments and we’ve shown so much potential. It’s just a matter of staying at that [amazing] level more consistently and not getting into slumps during the game.”

Claire Krugler (`16) agrees with Ford that consistency is one thing that the Vikings must work on for their next match.

“I think what we can work on is just being consistent over all, both energy and skill-wise,” Krugler said. “I think that we have really good moments, but I think that some of our lower moments we can really work on turning over faster.”

The Vikings experienced one of these slumps as they trailed behind the Spartans for all of the third set. Although Paly was able to close Mountain View’s lead to five points, Mountain View eventually won the third set 25-21.

After dominating against Mountain View for most of the fourth set, Paly defeated Mountain View 25-16 with a kill from Chelsea Fan (`18).

The Vikings trailed behind the Spartans throughout the fifth set and were unable to take the lead. Paly fell to the Spartans in the fifth set 15-7.

The Vikings play in their Dig Pink game on Thursday at Los Altos at 6:45.