After beating Texas Arlington in their home opener last Thursday, the Pioneers lost on the road to Air Force on Tuesday and New Mexico State on Saturday.
In the game against the Air Force Academy, the Crimson and Gold (8-7, 2-3 WAC) fell 3-2 after a hard-fought five-game series in which they never lost by more than six points.
Freshman outside hitter Michele Swope led the team with 16 kills and also posted 14 digs, second only to senior libero Lyndi Johnson, who had 15. Junior Colleen King and redshirt sophomore Cassie Ronda each tallied eight kills.
Senior Faimie Kingsley had seven kills and accounted for 12 blocks out of the team’s total of 18. Sophomore setter Frances Carroll had 31 assists in this game. Despite these Pioneer performances, Denver was unable to top the Falcons and fell 3-2 (25-18, 20-25, 25-19, 24-26, 9-15).
“I felt like we played up and down, we just weren’t able to find any consistency,” said head coach Jesse Mahoney. “Air Force is a great team and we allowed them to hang around and when you get to set five you never know what’s going to happen. But regardless of the score, I am proud of the team and how we fought and competed.”
On Saturday afternoon, the Pioneers fell to the New Mexico State Aggies 3-0 in Las Cruces, N.M., in their fifth conference game. The first two matches were close with scores of 25-22 and 25-19 in favor of the Aggies, but New Mexico State led the entire third set and finished with a score of 25-16.
King led Denver with eight kills and five blocks. She currently leads the team in kills with 147 so far this season. Ronda added seven kills.
Setters Bailey Karst and Carroll split the duties almost evenly with 16 and 15 assists, respectively.
Defensively, sophomore Kate Acker led the team with eleven digs. Fellow sophomore Samantha Berger and Johnson each added six.
“New Mexico State is a very good team, especially on their home court,” said Mahoney. “We struggled to gain a rhythm early in the match as we used a new line-up due to injury. I was proud of how our team competed the entire match. We’ve got a tough road trip coming up and we must learn to compete in different environments.”
This week, the Pioneers will travel to San Jose, Calif., to take on San Jose State on Thursday at 8 p.m. before heading to Utah State for a 7 p.m. matchup. Both contests are conference compeitions.
“The WAC is a good league; there are not going to be any easy wins,” said Mahoney. “We’re figuring out that we can’t take a match off and expect to win. We have some tough matches ahead and we’ll continue to try to find wins on the road.”
