Lady Eagles play improves in loss to Loyola

By Keith Henry

Coppin State volleyball wanted to forget about their poor performances vs. UMBC and Towson the previous day. They may have shown some spunk this afternoon at Morgan State’s Hill Field House, but Loyola was able to outlast the Lady Eagles 3-1 (11-25, 25-17, 25-14, 25-18).

Coppin State head coach Romonzo Beans said, “Same girls. Sometimes you got to get the crap beat out of you to get all the crap out to realize that you are good. They have the potential to be good and the potential to be better. They’re leaving it on the court and playing hard every single point.”

The Lady Eagles have shown some signs of growth during the match. Especially in the first game where it was a tight affair early. With CSU ahead 10-9, their big run began on a service error by Loyola’s Meghan Lowry. That begun a six point run where kills were put down from Alexandria Malesick and Ashley Saunders. Then Malesick and Vanity Massey blocked Nina Camaioni’s kill attempt followed by two aces from Stephanie Simmons. That extended the Coppin advantage to 16-9.

After a kill from Camaioni, Malesick hammered a kill followed by three consecutive Loyola errors to further extend the lead to 20-10. After Haley Beechler missed a serve, Loyola’s Brittany Born missed her serve as well. Beechler placed a kill beyond Loyola’s reach, a hitting error from Loyola’s Taylor Koncelik, Massey then pounded down a kill. The game ended on an attack error from Born. Christina Epps said about the first game, “In game one, we kept up the energy and excitement. We kept pushing. Unfortunately, we had a few errors here and there that let us down a little bit (later on). We got to keep up the energy. Keep going and pushing. So, that’s our main goal.”

From the second game on, the inconsistencies of Coppin were apparent. Loyola (4-2) properly took advantage of those inconsistencies and the duo of Camaioni and Katie Dircks went to work. Camaioni led everyone with 16 kills and 12 digs while Dircks had 11 kills to follow up.

Vanity Massey and Yolanda Reid led Coppin with seven kills each and Beechler had 24 assists. Tyler Phillips led with 10 digs. Missed serves and some missed communication hurt Coppin (0-7) in the last three games. Beans was happy with the Coppin effort saying, “They hustled their butts off today. But they didn’t hustle enough. There’s more to it. There’s more. And they’re just starting to realize that they should know. They’ve been doing this long enough. Otherwise, they wouldn’t play Division I volleyball. The young girls are getting bigger and making good choices. Everyone is accepting their role and understanding what their job is in filling that role.”

Epps learned from this game, “What we can learn is keep pushing and keep the energy. As long as we have the energy, we can battle any team out here.”

Coppin State’s first game win of the season gave the Lady Eagles some momentum that ultimately, they weren’t able to hold on to because of their small mistakes. Beans says about momentum, “The more you play, the more they understand what momentum does. It’s how once you’ve got it, how to keep it or if you don’t have it, how to get it. They had some sparks out there but not everyone jumped into the fire. When they were all in it, regardless of what happened, the fire never went out. When they look at this tape and see to themselves what it looks like to be on fire. They would be like, ‘Oh, that was me.’ Hell yeah that was you. You can do it.”