Clovers fall to Brown County

CLOVERDALE ­— Brown County was out for revenge on Tuesday when it made the trip to take on Cloverdale in volleyball action. Back on Sept. 7 the Clovers got their lone win of the season in a 2-0 tournament win over the Eagles 25-23, 25-21. Tuesday the Eagles avenged that loss with with 3-0 (25-10, 25-16, 25-20) win.

Cloverdale (1-17, 0-6 WIC) began the game with the score even at 7-7 in the first set. After that, the opening set belonged to the visiting Eagles who outscored the Clovers 18-3 the rest of the way.

In set two the hosts played well for about half of the set, only trailing the Eagles 15-14. Once again a strong finish by Brown County (4-8, 1-4 WIC) saw it go on another run, this time it was a 10-2 advantage to go up 2-0.

In the final set is where the Clovers showed the most life. They began the early stages with an 8-3 lead before the Eagles scored four straight to make it 8-7. Fast forward to the middle part of the set and the Clovers were still holding strong with a 16-12 advantage before another rally by the Eagles made it 17-16. With the score tied at 20, the Eagles went on to score the final five to secure the sweep.

“This is tough loss,” Clover coach Paige Glassburn said. “Knowing that we came out on top the last time we played them, I thought we’d at least be able to take them to five. We just can’t seem to get over that hump. We’re playing well and seeing improvement but right now we have to apply what we’re hearing in the timeouts out on the floor.”

The Clovers did improve each and every set as the match went on. It was the little runs by the Eagles where the Clovers couldn’t stop the bleeding that were the biggest issues.

Brown County only had 26 kills on the evening so the other 49 points were scored in another variety of ways, which included errors by the Clovers. Those errors is something that Glassburn noted is still a cause for concern.

“We count errors and at one point every point that they (Brown County) had was because of an error that we made,” she said. “We have to make them earn their points and not continually give teams free points with our mistakes. It just seems too that when we get ourselves in a hole, we just can’t dig ourselves out of it. We were ahead and excited with how things were going int the third set, but let them back in it and those are things we’ll get better at.”

A big part of this season for the Clovers is simply learning how to compete and learning how to win. It’s a team that doesn’t have a single senior and features seven underclassmen. While the season is beginning to wind down, Glassburn knows that progress has still been made with her team.

“There have been a lot of ‘what ifs’ this year,” she said. “It’s a learning curve when you don’t have those experience players who have been playing varsity for a few years to lean on. We’re certainly learning a lot and next year is going to be even better.”

One positive for the Clovers on the night came off the court. It was their annul ‘Pink Out’ night as the team wore all-pink jerseys in support of breast cancer awareness. Before the varsity game the Clovers went into the stands to give pink flowers to anyone who has been affected by any form of cancer in their lives. The team also had a raffle drawing where fans could buy tickets to be entered to win prized that were awarded at the end of the night. Along with that, the money raised by the Clovers is going directly to former assistant coach Tayler Jones’ mother-in-law, who is currently battling breast cancer.

“A night like tonight really hits home when you know who and where the money is going towards,” Glassburn said. “This has been something that we’ve been for years. I remember doing it when I was playing. Tayler does such a great job of getting everything organized behind the scenes. We have some other locals here in Cloverdale that we’re hoping to help out with this too.”

Cloverdale returns to the floor on Thursday it travels to fellow Puntam County foe North Putnam (4-14).