Box Score The Wayland Baptist Pioneer volleyball team dropped its Sooner Athletic Conference opener on Tuesday, falling to Lubbock Christian University, 25-23, 17-25, 25-20, 25-14.
The loss – in a match that marked the home-opener for the Pioneers after 12 season-opening road contests – ended a five-match winning streak for Wayland (5-8, 0-1). Lubbock Christian, ranked No. 21 in the NAIA Top 25 poll before dropping out this week, improved to 12-4 and 1-0.
"They are a solid team," Wayland coach
Jim Giacomazzi said of the Lady Chaps. "Everybody on that team can hit. Erin Fisher (23 assists, 10 digs) did a super job. We kept trying to hit deeper in that corner, but she had a lot of quality digs. She's as good as their libero, and, of course, we're disappointed to see that."
After never leading in the first set but making a charge toward the end, Wayland led most of the way in the second game. The Pioneers rolled off six straight points midway through, going from a 7-7 tie to a 13-7 lead and then cruising from there.
LCU took command again in the third set, although Wayland didn't go down easily. Each time the Lady Chaps appeared to be pulling away, Wayland came storming back. The Pioneers were within one at 19-18 before being outscored 6-2 down the stretch.
Wayland again fell behind early in the fourth game, trailing 12-6 before once again rallying. LCU proved too tough, though, tallying five unanswered to expand a 17-12 lead to 22-12, and then finally putting it away.
"When LCU had their starting lineup in, we nearly came back and won the first set," Giacomazzi said. "We jumped to a huge lead in second, then after intermission came out a little flat. We didn't refocus enough and made too many mistakes.
"If you break down our hitting in games 3 and 4, the mistakes were on our side of the net. We had some serve receive errors (six) as well."
Claire Jacobsma paced the Pioneers with 16 kills, followed by
Shahala Hawkins with 11.
Jaharys Archilla led five Pioneers with double-digit digs with 16, and
Natasha Giacomazzi produced 42 assists. Hawkins had one solo block and three block assists. Wayland ended with a .172 hitting percentage compared to LCU's .215.
"Claire (Jacobsma) hit the ball well," Coach Giacomazzi said. "She had a lot of swings, a lot of kills and a couple of silly mistakes, but that's going to happen (since this was) only her third match of year."
All in all, Giacomazzi was pleased.
"Some of our choices in who to set to sometimes were wrong, but that will come with more communication," he said. "We did a lot of good things; there's hope. It's exciting to know where we are right now considering who we played against and how well we did. If we'd have gotten (beaten badly), we might think maybe we don't have the players to make it, but we do. The girls have a great attitude, work ethic, talent … if everybody stays healthy, we're going to be in the mix."
After playing two matches at LCU's Rip Griffin Center last weekend, the Pioneers return there again Friday to take on top-ranked UT-Brownsville at 11 a.m. Wayland then returns to SAC play at 11 a.m. Saturday at home against John Brown University.
"We have a product out there that's only going to get better," Giacomazzi said. "As the girls get more experience, we will have more success. You have to put in hard work to be successful and we are doing that."
