The Cerritos College Falcons defeated Mt. San Antonio College Grizzly Bears by a score of 3-0 continuing their dominating form now on a four-game sweeping streak on Sept. 27.
“Anytime you can beat Mt. Sac it feels good because you just know they have every resource available at their school,” said head coach Kari Hemmerling, “Mt. Sac is a really good team, they’re well coached,” she later finished.
The Falcons started hot, leading most of the early part of the first set while having a back-and-forth game in the first set before taking the lead again and winning the first set by a score of 25 to 22.
“That team was definitely on our tail the whole time and so I’m glad we made our comebacks when we needed to win our serving runs when we needed to and we just got the job done,” said sophomore setter/right side Sydney May.
The theme continued in the second set where Mt. Sac started slow against the Falcons where the lead was as big as 14-8 in favor of the Falcons but Mt. Sac cut the lead to 22-21 before Cerritos timeout.
“Volleyball is a game of momentum and I told the girls, before our match there’s going to be highs, there’s going to be lows, and you just got to try to find the waves and ride the waves,” said Hemmerling.
Returning after the timeout where Mt. Sac started strong taking the lead 23-22 however Falcons finished strong scoring three straight and winning the second set at a score of 25 to 23.
The Falcons took the biggest lead of the match in the third set with a score of 12-3 seeming to close out this final set quickly.
The Grizzly Bears didn’t give up on the set trying their hardest to avoid the sweep and stay alive.
After a kill by May making the score 13-5, Mt. Sac scored eight unanswered points to tie the game at 13-13.
Libero/Defensive Specialist, Priscilla Castillo, who led the match in digs with 15, shared the struggles the Falcons had with letting Mt. Sac catch up, “We were just trying to do it quick, quick, quick, instead of just calming down and getting the pass up.”
Cerritos would have the lead at 18-14 heading into their time out and would keep the lead through the rest of the set.
“We calmed down after a while after coach called a timeout. I know that’s something we struggle with a little bit, but we’re still getting better at it,” Castillo added.
The final play ended on an attack error by Mt. Sac with Cerritos completing the sweep with a score of 25-22 ending the third set.
The stand-out player for this game was sophomore Outside Hitter/Middle Blocker Monserrat Rodriguez who in this game had 15 kills on a .343 kill percentage.
“I owe it to my teammates to work very hard. I’m trying to meet them halfway” Rodriguez said, “they have my back, I have theirs and so I’m going to continue working hard.”
Hemmerling believes anyone on her team can step up as someone different has stepped up every game.
“It’s going to be fun to see who steps up next, and if there’s a match where it’s 2 or 3 people, I think it’s gonna be really hard for teams to stop us,” Hemmerling said.
The Falcons play their next game at El Camino on Oct. 4 looking to continue off of their recent success.
