| East Carbon senior Chelsey Timothy digs for the ball during a recent game at the Viking gym against Meridian School. |
The past week hasn’t been a great one for the East Carbon athletic department.
The boys baseball team finished a disappointing fourth in the state tournament last weekend.
But before that a bad omen occurred. The very strong girls volleyball team, who was tied for the Region 18 lead at the beginning of the week, lost two sets at home to the league leading Dugway Lady Mustangs. In the first set they lost in three games and in the second set they lost in two straight.
Maybe the baseball team should have taken the hint.
“The girls knew this game was important,” said Alisa Preston, head volleyball coach at ECH. “I guess they thought about it so much they just couldn’t play the way they normally do.”
The team missed 16 serves in the first match, compared to most sets they have played this year where they only have missed a handful at most.
In the second set they just couldn’t come back from the disastrous first set.
“If we had played our game as we normally do we could have won,” said the coach. “But we didn’t.”
The Lady Vikes now have three losses which ties them with Tintic for second place. The Miners face the weakest team in the league this week, Meridian, and so they will probably get two more wins. Next week East Carbon faces Wasatch Academy on Tuesday, a team not much stronger than Meridian, but they will probably have to win both to get a chance to go into the region tournament as a decent seed. If the teams tie for second a coin toss will decide in what place they go into the region tournament in Wendover on Oct. 25.
“We just have to make the remaining games ours and not let the other teams take over,” said Preston.
The state tournament starts on Halloween and the Lady Vikes want to be there. If they can come out as one of the top two teams from the tournament from Region 18 they automatically get in.
“If we don’t, we will have to compete in a play in game to get into the tournament,” says the coach. “Not something we want to do.”