In the team’s season opener against the visiting Taft Toreadors, the Saugus Centurions were looking forward to beginning the year with a win.
But in the end, the Centurions lost in four sets, 25-21, 18-25, 18-25, 21-25, Thursday night at Saugus High School.
For Saugus head coach Amy Suppes, she believes there can be positive takeaways from the game despite the defeat to the Toreadors.
“I think that it exposed a lot of things that we need to work on, and better now than in two weeks,” she said. “I’m not excited that we lost. I’m excited about what I saw out there, because I think we saw just how high a ceiling could be.”
In the first set, the Centurions (0-1) started off slowly and fell behind to Taft (1-0).
After the Toreadors took a 7-4 lead following a kill, the Centurions rallied to not only take back the lead but to win 25-21 after a Taft service error gave Saugus the win.
After the game, Suppes said the first set showed a lot of good play, and she’s proud of her team’s execution.
But in the second and third sets, the Toreadors came onto the court looking poised to grab the win.
The Toreadors didn’t make any mistakes and when the Centurions fell behind, the Taft offense capitalized and scored multiple points off rallies to win the second and third set by comfortable margins.
Suppes said that the Centurions just didn’t adjust quickly enough to the Toreadors’ fast-tempo offense and will work to prevent those mistakes from happening again.
“We just didn’t adjust faster than [Taft] did. Volleyball is all about who can adjust and perform faster,” she said. “A lot of it is mental, being able to bounce back faster and not let the other team go on those runs. But specifically serving needs to be way tougher so that we can put ourselves in a better position offensively or defensively.”
In the fourth set, the Centurions looked to have adjusted to the tempo the Toreadors had set and didn’t make any early mistakes.
The Centurions rallied to take a 15-9 lead over Taft and looked poised to win the set.
But after an 8-2 scoring run from the Toreadors to tie the set at 17 apiece, Taft took back the lead and dueled with the Centurions until the set’s final moments.
By the end, the Toreadors won the set 25-21 off an 8-4 rally and secured the win over Saugus.
In the loss, senior opposite hitter Josh Lane ended the day with a team-leading 10 kills while libero Riley Arana tallied nine digs.
For Suppes, although the loss can be frustrating, she’s still very optimistic with the team’s performance and saw room for growth on the court throughout the game that will help as the season continues.
“I still think our expectations are high,” he said. “I’m not worried, I’m not deterred in any way from this, like I said, I think that is best thing that could have happened.”
The Centurions play again Tuesday on the road for a matchup against the Quartz Hill Royals with the game set to begin at 5 p.m.
