Lady Swords Swept at HPU
CUH was swept in the rematch against HPU on Wednesday night.
The Chaminade University of Honolulu women’s volleyball team were swept by Hawaii Pacific University (25-20, 25-21, 25-23) on Wednesday night at the Shark Tank. The Swords now possess a 13-3 PacWest Conference mark and are in a three-way tie with HPU and UH Hilo for second place, a half game behind Azusa Pacific.
“Just as the outcome shows loss in three sets, definitely not what we wanted,” said junior rightside hitter Rachel Reedy, who led CUH with 10 kills. “Definitely not what we should have gone out there thinking we were going to get. I think that we went in with too much confidence or not enough fight, and that shows.”
This is the first time since 2016 that Chamainde has lost to HPU. The last time the Swords faced off with the Sharks, on Sept. 19, CUH pulled out a five-set win. The team was looking to recover from a disappointing five-set loss to UH Hilo on Sunday at McCabe Gymnasium.
“We attempted to mentally shake off our last loss,” said head coach Kahala Kabalis Hoke, who is in her eighth year of being a head coach at Chaminade. “With also trying to balance some rest in there, but we also had a lot to work on. We practiced some different offensive schemes in our serve-receive rotations [and] just came into this game having more options, and we did not execute on those options.”
In the three-set loss to HPU, Chaminade struggled with at the net, struggling with 25 hitting errors (with only 39 kills) and mustering only four blocks to HPU’s 12.
“We fell short of executing our offense,” Hoke said. “We had a poor offensive game. … We had almost double the hitting errors they did, so we definitely fell short offensively.”
Emma Tecklenburg had eight kills but 11 hitting errors, and Annah Rivera had nine kills. Reedy added two block assists and four digs to her team-leading 10 kills.
“We needed to use this game to prepare for it and just show that we can fight back from Hilo and take care of business,” Reedy said. “But we have a couple more days to just get our minds in the right space and not dwell on this loss, but look at what we can learn from it and how we can grow. We just need to kind of fine tune, so that when we hit the road, we are not going to be affected by a different state across the ocean. We’re just going to know this what were capable of and go in playing each game fully confident.”
Chamainde now heads on the road and takes on Azusa Pacific on Nov. 11. The last time the Swords met with the Cougars, the Swords got swept on Oct. 25. Moving on from three losses in the last four matches, especially after such a promising start to the season (18-2 start, with 13 straight wins), the team and coaching staff will look to regroup before leaving.
“We are going to give them a day off, because it’s been a grueling week,” Hoke said. “… See if we can regroup mentally and recover physically.”