Team captain and libero Ashley Castro saw overconfidence as the reason for the volleyball team’s 3-2 loss to Long Beach City College on Friday, Nov. 8.

“We got really loose as a team and we couldn’t bring it back after that,” Castro said.

Outside hitter Valerie Montoya had eight kills on 23 attempts and echoed her captain’s thoughts and said, “Basically we got over confident. We just relaxed with our playing and we made way too many unforced errors with ourselves mentally.”

Assistant head coach Gigi Tisdom felt as if the mental part of the game got the best of the team rather than the being outmatched physically.

“…We probably need to work a little harder with the girls on leaving things outside the building and coming in prepared. It just seemed like today was just not one of those mentally strong days,” Tisdom said.

Cerritos College was up 2-0 after the first two sets but Long Beach College was able to make the adjustments to tip the balance in its favor.

Tisdom credits Long Beach defensive changes for the loss, “They found our weakness and they did a good job at that. We could not recover. It was a little shocking to our back row and our setters kinda crashed a little bit,” she said.

Montoya feels that practice can help the team from getting loose during a game and said, “Working from the bottom, always putting the tension on us, instead of playing like we have the game. We just need to finish it as a whole and as a team.”

With the loss, Cerritos College drops to 5-6 in conference matches, in danger of missing the playoffs.

Castro sees the urgency in the last few games and said, “We want to make it to playoffs so we need those games. Now (with the loss) I don’t know how that is going to work, but we need to keep pushing to win the rest of the games,” she said.

The next three matches of the season are conference matches that lead to the Southern California Regional Playoffs and Tisdom feels that the team will make it to the playoffs if the team is able to bounce back.

“We really need to take Pasadena (College)…Then (Mt. San Antonio College) is not that far behind and that is another game we would like to accomplish. If we can get through those two, the third one we have hands down,” Tisdom said.

The next match is on Wednesday, Nov. 13 at Mt. San Antonio, who currently has a 8-3 record in conference play.