Shauna Cook The Corsair Today (Nov. 4) was the first match for the NJCAA REGION State Championship for the Lady Pirates. They played Hillsborough CC which ended in a 4 set loss, 19-25, 19-25, 28-26, 21-25.
“Hats off to Hillsborough,” Head Coach Chris Laird said. “They played better than we did and deserved to win.”
Even with the loss in the first match, Lady Pirates kept their heads up and stood strong.
“You just don’t look back and you keep going forward because you can’t go back in time and changed what happened,” Sarah Guidry said. “You just gotta move on.”
Through the frustration and pressure, Team Captain, Karson Hinds pushed and motivated her team-mates no matter how hard the match got.
“I talk a lot and I try to keep everyone’s spirits up,” Karson Hinds said. “I get frustrated sometimes and I just gotta chill out and keep encouraging the team.”
With emotions coming on strong and the frustration on the rise due to interuptions through-out the match (not keeping up with scoreboard scores and refs calling bad and unnecessary calls), the Lady Pirates gave it their all.
“I think it’s frustrating because it’s a momentum game and it kills the momentum,” S. Guidry said. “You gotta get yourself back in it whenever a ref makes a bad call. You just want to do that much better to earn your next point to prove they made a bad call.
Libero Shantel Federick came in to serve for the win in set 3.
“I use to serve a lot,” Federick said.”I wasn’t expecting to serve today and coach told me to go in and serve. I was thinking about just getting it in and not try to serve an ace or anything.”
The Lady Pirates are still in it to win it. Tomorrow they will be playing St. Petersburg to determine if they will go to the finals.
“I know the girls’ know we definately gotta bring it tomorrow,” Laird said. “I feel we still have a really great opportunity and it’s in our hands so we have to go out there and give it our all.”