Isabel Mueller
ASU Student Journalist

Volleyball: McClintock falls to Horizon

October 4, 2018 by Isabel Mueller, Arizona State University


The McClintock Chargers made few plays, but ulitmately came up short in a girls’ varsity volleyball match against Horizon Thursday night.

Horizon won 3-0 to improve to 22-5, while McClintock is 1-13.

The Chargers have a very young team this season with some freshmen starting on varsity, and despite their record this season, and on Thursday were missing one of their top players due ot injury, junior Pearl Cervantes.

Cervantes sat with her team wearing her brace around her broken foot, shouting out words of encouragement and chants to try and bring up the team during the game.

“First off it really sucked just watching and not being able to play," she said. "But you just really get to take a step back and actually see how the players are playing. It is a lot different then being on the court. You get a different viewpoint and understanding because you get to really see our strengths and weaknesses in a different way.”

The first set of the game ended with a score of 25-3 and the second set ended with a score of 25-6.

Mollie Olsen, a senior who plays middle blocker, said, “I think we should work on communication and working together as a team on the court, but I think we really did do good with our overall skills ... We all did best on the second set. Today I played left side and normally don’t. I hit pretty well so I was proud of myself for that.”

Valorie McKenzie, coach of the Horizon Huskies gave a humble response when asked about her team’s performance. She spoke about how despite being a good serving team she feels that her team lost a little focus but overall had a good game.

“Tonight’s win was good and the whole team got to play. We worked on a few things, we needed to work on our slides and a few things system wise," McKenzie said. "We missed a lot of serves tonight so we'll work on aggressive serving. But I thought we hit and passed the ball really well off of serves.”

The final set ended with a score of 25-10 but the Chargers did start off the set well scoring the first point of the set and keeping a steadier rhythm with passing the ball.

Senior Kendra Parker who alternates between middle blocker and right side, had some good plays of the night, including a block. Parker stayed optimistic in hopes for improvement for their next match.

“We need to work on team building and our basic skills. We need to put those together and just trust each other more for our next match," she said.