Volleyball loses five straight

By Cristiana Votta

Rider’s volleyball team (6-7, 0-4 MAAC) has seen early season success, but after a recent four-game slump, the Broncs were looking to find its previous success when they faced Manhattan on Wednesday night. Unfortunately, the Broncs were swept in three sets to extend the losing streak to five straight games.

The loss left a sour taste in the Broncs’ mouth after losing 25-18, 25-12 and 25-15.

“We stopped playing and gave up,” senior captain Brittany Gajewski said. “Unfortunately, there is not a lot of positive to [take away], but we have a lot of work to do for the weekend. It starts with changing our attitude. It ends with us not settling for the ‘better than last year’ mentality.”

Gajewski wasn’t the only player to feel as though the Broncs gave up in the game.

“It was our first loss that I’ve ever seen our team give up,” sophomore captain Jaclyn Webber said. “We are going to teach ourselves what it means to work hard and fight. Our serve receive struggled tonight and put us out of our system. We need to find us again.”

Sophomore Kayla Wong finished with six kills, the most for the Broncs against Manhattan.

Gajewski credits the recent struggles the team has faced to being sloppy in their play.

“The biggest problem we’ve had recently is consistency,” Gajewski said. “We need to just start playing fluently throughout the entire match rather than playing well in one game and not stepping it up throughout the rest. We’ve done a lot better than last year coming together as a team but we still need to do a little bit more to get to the level where we want to be.”

The Broncs are hoping that the previous loss to Manhattan will bring out the intensity in their game for future conference play.

“Going into this weekend, I’m going to try and bring out the ‘dog’ in us, the angry ‘go get everything and don’t stop until you get your rank’ kind of attitude,” Gajewski said. “Maybe it will inspire everyone to do well.”

Freshman Brandie Hill agreed with Gajewski’s statement.

“I think we as a team need to bring more fire and intensity to the court,” she said. “We are getting really complacent and we need to bring a higher sense of urgency. We need a strong will to win. I believe if we find it mentally within ourselves and make the changes our coach wants us to make, we’ll be successful.”