On Friday, Aug. 30, the freshman volleyball team was narrowly defeated by the Stony Point Tigers 2-1 in a fierce game that resulted in a tiebreaker during the third set.

The Warriors started to gain a lot of points a little bit into the set. Towards the middle of the set, they managed to tie with the Tigers twice at 14-14 and 15-15. Ella Wood ‘23 spiked the ball and scored a point after an intense rally And with a very close spike over the net, Kylie Wardlow ‘23 scored a point. Olivia Cook ‘23 scored a point by spiking the ball over the net. Despite their best efforts, they narrowly lost their first set with a score of 25-22. 

“We thought that this was going to be an easier game than it was because we saw JV White totally demolish [Stony Point],” Wood said. “We were maybe a bit too cocky I guess, and so then I feel like on the first set, we felt we were good and then just kind of went downhill.” 

The Tigers scored the first points of the second set, but the Warriors started to catch up. During the set, there was a dispute when a ball Wardlow served landed on the line, but the referee called it an out and gave the point to the Tigers. When the dispute was resolved, the referee gave the Warriors a point, saying that the ball had landed on the line.  Wardlow also tipped the ball over the net twice, scoring two points. Wood scored a few points with bumps and spikes. The Warriors also received lots of points through the Tigers hitting the net. Each team was scoring a few points back-and-forth, until towards the end, when the Warriors scored lots of points and won the set with a score of 25-16. 

“In the last set we had five really good points, and that’s when our momentum started to push, and in the second set we kept the momentum up; we kept our foot on the pedal,” Katie Liu ‘23 said. 

The third set was intense. The Warriors scoring, but the Tigers soon caught up and tied with them twice. It soon turned into a battle, similar to the second set, where both teams kept scoring a few points back and forth, except this went on until they were tied once again towards the very end of the game. At this point, the crowd was heavily invested in the game, and roars and cheers were wilder than before. The stakes were very high. Both teams had a score of 24 points, and the winner was going to be determined by a tiebreaker, which needed a team to earn two points in order to determine the winner. The Tigers scored the next two points and won the set 26-24. 

“I feel like they shouldn’t have come so close. They were at 16 and we were at 21, and we let them get five points,’ Liu said. 

The Warriors fought a hard battle. This game was better than their past games, according to Liu.

“It [the game] was way better. It was closer, but we honestly would like to win a game in two sets, not three. We don’t like going to the third set; No one does,” Liu said. “But we’ve definitely gotten better. We still need to work more, practice, and push each other to get better,”

The Warriors will play their next game against McNeil away from home on Tuesday, Sep. 3 at 6:30 p.m.