by David Sutton
Sports Editor
The men’s volleyball team suffered a pair of losses last week. The Leopards traveled to the UC Santa Barbara to take on the Gauchos last Saturday. The Gauchos won in three games 15-5,15-4 and 15-2.
On Tuesday, Jan. 31, the team traveled to Los Angeles to take on the powerful University of Southern California Trojans. The Trojans won three straight game’s 15- 3, 15-3 and 15-9.
The Leopards drew first blood when sophomore Ray Garza’s serve was mishandled by many Trojan players and the ball went out of bounds.
La Verne played tough early on. Freshmen Garrison Chaffee of La Verne smashed a pin point kill into the middle of the Trojan defense to regain the serve for La Verne, but the Leopards lost the serve on the next play.
The Trojans began to play like the high powered, finesse team in which they are known for. The score became 1-1 when the Trojans blocked a shot and it went off a La Verne player.
The game began to turn. La Verne began to play like they were not into the game.
“Some line up changes through us off and we were not focused,” said Head Coach Don Flora.
After smashing sideouts and repeated double blocks by the Trojans, La Verne was down 6-1. La Verne had trouble handling the ball. The Trojans continued to pound La Verne, increasing their lead to 11-1.
La Verne sophomore Joel Harworth regained the serve for his team when he made a sideout. Freshmen J.R. Gonsalves managed to hit through a double block by two Trojan players to bring the score to 12-2.
La Verne scored one more time before the Trojans ended the game with a smoking smash off Garza’s hands.
Game two was much of the same as game one. The Trojans scored 10 unanswered points. La Verne appeared to be tired. They had no power in their shots and struggled to get a number of shots over the net. The Trojans continued to pour it on and won the game 15-3.
In game three La Verne fell behind quickly 9-0, but they did not give up. A spark of hope came when senior Kevin Graves fought off two hard smashes to gain serve the for La Verne. With the score 9-2 shots were beginning to fall for La Verne the score moved to 12-6. With the score 12-8 Chaffee blocked one of the hardest shots of the night by a Trojan bringing the score to 12-9.
“We were not as mentally tough as we should be. We could also be stronger,”said Flora.
The Trojans regained the serve and scored three quick points to win the game 15-9, and sweep La Verne for the match.
