The flashes are there. The athleticism pops with bursts of speed and strength. Skill shots can be seen in every set.
However, the Durango volleyball team couldn’t stop shooting itself in the foot on Friday and Saturday afternoons. The Demons gave away way too many points with hitting errors and paid the price. Durango lost 3-1 to Grand Junction Central and 3-2 to Fruita Monument.
After the losses, Durango fell to 4-4 overall and 0-2 in the 5A/4A Intermountain League.
On Friday, Durango lost the first set 25-20 and the second set 26-24. The Demons won the third set 25-21 before losing the fourth set 30-28.
Junior outside hitter Hadyn Neiman led Durango with 15 kills and four aces. Senior outside hitter Avery Rike had 12 kills and junior Aysia Mathews had 10 kills.
“We played sluggish, but I also felt like we made too many reckless errors, too many,” Durango head coach Kelley Rifilato said. “Hitting errors alone, we had 29 and then service errors 11. That's 40 points that we gave to the other team. You can't win a match if you make that many errors. You have to hand it to Central because they kept the ball in play and waited for us to make errors.”
Rifilato said everyone on the team tried to hit the ball straight down instead of hitting the ball off the block or hitting a creative shot. She also said Grand Junction Central played a slower tempo and the Demons fell into that tempo instead of playing fast like they want to.
Another player who stood out to Rifilato was junior Mia Carozza. Rifilato said she had a fantastic performance by being all over the court.
In the fourth set, Rifilato changed some players up on the back row which helped. The set still came down to hitting errors which doomed Durango and led to the loss.
On Saturday, the Demons came out strong and won the first set 25-18 against Fruita Monument. They then lost the second set 25-21 and the third set 25-22. Durango rallied to win the fourth set 26-24 before falling in the fifth set 16-14.
“It was better than last night,” Rifilato said. “Parts of it were better than last night. Passing was a million times better than last night. Serving we didn't make as many errors as last night, but then we had one ace. How do you have one ace on one night? We're a tough serving team so I don't know. We struggled blocking. We have right sides that had no blocks and we have left sides that had no blocks. So we just have to go back to the drawing board.”
No individual stats were available at press time.
Rifilato started Carozza at libero against Fruita which seemed to settle Durango on offense to start and put it on the right track. The hitting errors from the game before were gone and Durango led 11-3 which caused a Fruita timeout.
An errorless game for the Demons could only continue for so long and Fruita cut the Durango lead to 13-8.
However, Durango’s power and athleticism showed with some great saves. A powerful Rike kill pushed the Demon lead to 19-10.
Fruita wouldn’t go away and caused numerous side-outs which brought the Wildcats into play down 22-18. After Rifilato called a timeout, Durango successfully blocked Fruita’s attempts at the net to win the set 25-18.
The second set started 5-4 Durango after Edwards and Mathews had some powerful kills to give the Demons the lead. Fruita had some fantastic saves which led to points and an 8-6 lead. Fruita continued to play well and finished the set.
In the third set, Durango took a 7-3 lead off some Fruita errors. The Demons had answers for Fruita and had quality ball control which led to nice sets for kills. But hitting errors from Durango and tip kills by Fruita led to a win in the third set.
Durango led in the fourth set until Fruita battled back due to hitting errors. The Demons battled and took the set off a Fruita hitting error.
The fifth set started like other sets with Durango holding a lead. Two hitting errors at the end of the fifth by the Demons gave Fruita the victory.
Durango is back in action at Grand Junction on Saturday at 11 a.m.
bkelly@durangoherald.com
