In a back and forth battle, Paly defeated Los Gatos 3-2 in their first league game of the season.
“It was such a tale of two cities,” coach David Winn said. “From us sweeping them, to getting our butts kicked… It was a game of streaks.”
Although the teams were evenly matched, the Vikings came out determined to win.
“We just went out there and played our hardest.” Lauren Kerr (‘14) said.
Paly started the game off strong, scoring the first point of the match. They won the first two sets, and then their play declined in the third and fourth sets.
“There were a lot of communication issues,” Kerr said, “We’re a team that needs to play as a team, we can’t play separately as individuals.”
Along with communication, the Vikings felt they had other factors which affected their game play.
“We made a lot of hitting errors which we could have avoided,” Becca Raffel (‘14) said. “And we need to work on serving and passing.”
The Vikings also have other skills to improve upon in practice.
“We need to work on shot selection, we went away from good shots,” Winn said. “We missed our serving targets a lot… so we’re going to have to work on that too.”
Although the lady Vikes had lost their previous two sets, they came into fifth set with high spirits.
“We stayed strong even though we weren’t playing great,” Raffel said. “We made a lot of unforced errors. I think what helped us was just staying unified as a team and still fighting.”
In the fifth set, the Vikings improved their play and won 15-11.
“Once we got back together and started communicating better we really played as a team,” Kerr said. “That’s what let us believe in ourselves and be able to win.”
The Vikings’ ability to adapt aided them in pulling out the win.
“We did a good job of adapting,” Raffel said. “One of the things we worked on in practice was taking what each team does and trying to adjust it. By the end of the game we had adapted pretty well.”
Having won their first league game, Paly looks forward to the rest of their season.
“We’re two good teams, two evenly matched teams,” Winn said. “There was a lot riding on this as the first league match against probably one of the top three teams in the league. So it’s huge, to come away and survive that. It’s huge.”
The Vikings will play Homestead High School at 6:45 on Thursday, September 26th.
