Long Beach City College’s women’s beach volleyball team defeated Mt. San Antonio College 5-0 in its first match on Friday. During their second match, the team was defeated by El Camino Community College 3-2 leaving them with an overall record of five wins and three losses for the season so far.
“We had a hard practice this week, so we’re just trying to push our bodies to be ready for today. We went over a lot of things during practice and I feel like we’re prepared, we just have to execute,” LBCC’s Celestial Ropati said after the first match.
Players were working hard during practice earlier this week, to be mentally and physically prepared for today’s game, as El Camino was seen as a challenging competitor who had an overall record of 12-3.
“This is our first big match of the season and El Camino is going to be a very strong opponent so I’m a little bit nervous but I’m also excited,” Lizbeth Lopez said.
The tension seemed to have been high amongst multiple players as they were excited to play against El Camino College and the team displayed confidence in their training and personal abilities on the court.
Many of the players are first-year students and have not been on the team for very long. Some are still getting accustomed to beach volleyball coming from an indoor volleyball background.
“I was kind of nervous, kind of excited as well. We weren’t able to get our routine one-hour warm-up, unlike the other teams. After the first game, I feel accomplished and ready to carry out the momentum,” Jennifer Lias said.
Although the team did not win the match against El Camino they certainly put up a fight with a strong defense that helped them pull ahead of Mt. San Antonio and the trail close behind El Camino.
“Our serving played a big role in getting us back into the game and disrupting the other team’s offense,” Ropati said.
Several of the players hope that going into the next game the team can polish up on staying disciplined and calm throughout their matches so that next game they may prevail.
“Going forward we need to work on staying disciplined because we have a tendency to play into the other team’s game. We should learn to start playing our game and staying disciplined throughout the match, we’ll get better and closing out these matches and limiting errors,” said Ropati
Lias added it is important to, “Stay disciplined and remember what I did during practice. Apply what I learned during practice into the game, get comfortable, and trust in my ability to win the game”
The next women’s beach volleyball match will be on March 25 at 10:00 A.M. against Victor Valley College and will take place at the Long Beach City College athletic center for those interested in attending.