| The CEU volleyball team finished their season on Tuesday evening with a win over Northwestern Colorado College. |
The final game of the CEU Lady Eagles volleyball season came on election day. A day when winners and losers are proclaimed from a long campaign of hard work, perseverance and diligence.
For the Lady Eagles this day ended a season where they worked hard and persevered, but the wins had not come.
But in the end they were on the winning side of the ballot as they defeated the Colorado Northwestern Community College Lady Spartans in all three games of their set 32-30, 36-16, 30-10.
The win culminated a campaign that began with hard workouts in August and hopes for a playoff spot in the Scenic West Athletic Conferences tournament that begins later this week.
But two losses last weekend, ended those dreams. On Friday night the team lost, (18-30, 23-30, 18-30) as most expected they would, to a tough College of Southern Idaho team that has only lost two matches all year.
But they still had a chance to get into the tournament if they could have beaten Northern Idaho on Saturday. They just needed one more vote to win.
But they didn’t. The team from the spud state took them down 19-30,28-30, 26-30.
“This was the tale of two seasons,” said a frustrated Brent Martindale on Wednesday morning. “We began so well and went down from there. Just look at the games last weekend. We played very well against a CSI, a tough team. Then the next night, instead of getting that kind of effort we lost to NIC and also lost our chance to go to the tournament.”
Martindale felt that the team worked hard this year, but they just didn’t gel like he thought they would.
“In these past few games Cassie Warburton and Stephanie Kolditz did very well,” he said. “For instance Warburton had 11 kills against NIC and nine each against the other two schools. Kolditz got eight against NIC and seven against each of the others. But we just couldn’t pull it out.”
So it’s now time to put away the volleyball uniform for the year. Two of the women on the team, Warburton and Cheryl Grant, both from the Castle Valley area will be also playing basketball this year for CEU.
As for next year, Martindale can only hope his recruiting pulls in some help (he had two key recruits not come to the school at the last minute this fall) and that the freshman from this year improve enough so next year things will get better.
“I’m in the middle of recruiting for next year now and it’s going well,” concluded Martindale.
And just as with elections, there is always another season coming up to hope for.