Volleyball’s 19-Match Winning Streak Comes to a Halt in Conference Play

Point Loma has ended the streak of 19 straight wins for Chaminade women’s volleyball team. 

This was an exciting conference match up of #1 PacWest Chaminade and tied for #2 Point Loma. On the line was Chaminade’s 19th consecutive PacWest wins, dating back to last season, and its program record 13th straight wins. This made for an intense mid-October matchup for both sides. 

Wednesday night the McCabe Gym was roaring with fans from both teams. A hard fought battle by the Silverswords was not enough to pull through a 3-1 loss (18-25, 25-22, 25-19, 25-20) to the Sea Lions.

“Point Loma did an excellent job coming out and executing, something that we lacked a ton,” said Chaminade head coach Kahala Kabalis Hoke. “This was a humbling experience and lesson learned to get back to work and focus on playing our game.”

Point Loma dominated the game with overall game leader, freshman outside hitter, Abigail Nua, scoring 20 kills. Point Loma took the first set loss (25-18) and the energy on their side was unstoppable at the start of the second set. 

Even Chaminade’s top two hitters for the season, Colombo and sophomore outside hitter, Greta Corti, were only able to capture 16 kills with 11 errors.

Coming into the game undefeated in the conference, Chaminade could not produce stats as hoped against competitor Point Loma. Point Loma leading points, kills, blocks, assists and digs on the stat sheet, left Chaminade unable to answer in the final three matches. 

The Silverswords had a rough start to Set 2, starting out with the score of 10-3. Point Loma dominated the offensive end with 35 attack attempts and 11 kills, with five back to back points scored. Chaminade called timeouts to slow down the Sea Loins and regroup. They were able to crawl out of the large seven point deficit and tighten the score 20-20. Even with this monster effort they went on to lose this set short 22-25 in the end.

Sets 3 and 4 were both very similar in score (25-19, 25-20). Chaminade was trailing the entirety of both sets and they were never able to quite catch the rhythm they needed for a comeback. On the other hand, Point Loma had 58 digs, led by senior liber, Courtney Dyer. Point Loma owned the kill count with 57-37, 20 more than Chaminade. Senior middle blocker, Saulala Lataisia, chipped in 7 out of 30 kills for Chaminade.

Even though this was a tough loss for the Silverswords as they were undefeated thus far, they plan on taking this and only getting better for the rest of conference play. Chaminade is still able to maintain the #1 standing in the conference and there will not be rematch between Chaminade and Point Loma. 

“Overall it was good for us to hit a rough patch right now, we can find a competitive swing again and get into a rhythm”, said middle blocker Sasha Colombo, who produced nine kills, seven digs and four aces. 

With an attendance of over 400 fans, the team expressed their gratitude for the continued support Sword Nation continues to give them on game days. At one point, a loud “Let’s go Swords” chant echoed throughout the gymnasium.

“We love playing in front of people and are very grateful that they were here and hope to bring them all back for Friday night’s game,” said Colombo. 

The Silverswords next match is Friday at McCabe Gym, at 7pm against Concordia University Irvine. Concordia is tied for #2 in the PacWest conference with a record of 8-3 in the conference, with a four game win streak. Previously in September, Chaminade swept Concordia in a quick 3-0 (25-18, 25-14,25-19) match.