Setter Crissy Silavong’s team-high of 15 assists, along with five digs, led the way as the volleyball team cruised through Los Angeles Trade-Technical College in straight sets to take a 1-0 start in conference play.

Cerritos College won each of the sets by at least 14 points and was able to hold Trade-Tech to a total of 29 points in the entire match.

However the lopsided win does not impede the teams focus on getting better.

“The win today was an easy win, but there are still some things that we need to work on, because we made too many mistakes and we let them score too many points off of our mistake,” Silavong said.

Head Coach Teresa Ortega backed her player’s comments and said, “I think the girls did very good. They didn’t make a lot of mistakes, they are working well. I know this isn’t a very strong team, but the important thing is that we have to play our game. We still need to practice a lot of things for the following games.”

Cerritos College had a total of 31 kills compared to 9 errors, and was also able to convert 15 service aces.

The servicing of the team really stood out to Ortega and she said, “We had a lot of girls serving aces and they are very important. Rally scores to help us get points. We need to improve on that, but we missed very few ones and we scored a lot.”

Outside hitter Valerie Montoya led the team with 6 kills and emphasized the importance of starting off conference games 1-0.

“We started off strong, we just need to keep going and with the momentum of the first game I think that we can do that,” Montoya said.

Although the team had a total of 28 assists, Ortega stressed the importance of the team’s passing going forward and said, “We made some plays and all that, but if you don’t have the passing, we can’t do that. We need to work on passing, passing, passing, passing.”

Silavong agreed with her coach and said, “We just need to focus on technique more and not get too laid back on the game. We were up by a lot of points and I feel like we underestimated them (by) letting them score too many points.”

Cerritos College now improves to 4-5 as it takes its four game winning streak to play against East Los Angeles College Wednesday, Oct. 9.