Volleyball Came Up Short at Walters State Tournament

The Spartanburg Methodist Volleyball team traveled to Morristown, TN to play Wallace State, Walters State, and Catawba Valley in the Walters State Invitational. The team came up short in two of the three matches dropping Wallace State and Catawba Valley but pulled out a four-set victory against Walters State, making the Pioneers undefeated in all three meetings this year.

Wallace State

The Lions proved why they were ranked earlier this season. Their fast offense and aggressive serving got SMC out of whack early on. The Pioneers sparked to life in the second set taking it 25-21 but failed to keep the momentum going throughout the duration of the match. Serve-receive and hitting errors kept the Pioneers from taking the match to five.

Walters State

They say the third time is the charm, but our Pioneers put a stop to that against the Lady Senators. Walters State opened the match with a first-set victory due to SMC’s unforced errors. Once SMC picked their serve and pass game- Walters couldn’t put a stop to it.

Catawba Valley

SMC, tired and hurting, started off in this match against the red hawks with lower energy than before. CVCC capitalized on it and took the first set 25-23. Despite SMC not playing their best, the Pioneers got back into it and took the second set. A more back-and-forth set ended in CVCC’s favor before SMC responded with a fourth-set victory. In the pivotal fifth set, CVCC started off on a 5-1 run to which SMC responded by tying it 8-8. CVCC then went on another run. SMC tried to close the 13-11 gap but it was too late.

“We were in control of every set this weekend. There are good and bad things about that. The good being when we play our style of volleyball, we can beat a wide range of teams. The other side of this is that when we make so many unforced errors, we are truly playing two teams out there instead of one, ourselves and our opponents.”