JC suffers second straight loss

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Errors continue to be the Jamestown College volleyball team’s Achilles heel this season. This time it was the Valley City State Vikings who reaped the benefits.

VCSU beat Jamestown College 21-25, 25-19, 25-17, 19-25, 15-13 on Wednesday night in Valley City.

The Jimmies rallied to win the fourth set to send the match into a decisive fifth, but with the match on the line Jamestown College made too many mistakes to escape with a victory.

“It’s the same M.O.,” said JC volleyball coach Jon Hegerle. “We had way too many errors at crucial times.”

The loss is the second straight defeat and first conference loss of the year, and Hegerle said the struggles all stem from one thing.

“We’re just not in the right mindset to compete at the collegiate level,” Hegerle said. “We think we can come in and play at 80 percent and that it’s going to be good enough, but it’s not.”

The Jimmies, who are now 10-7 on the year and 1-1 in the conference, will have a week off before returning to action on Wednesday, Sept. 28 as hosts against Dickinson State.

“I wish we played again tomorrow,” said Hegerle, who is in his third year as head coach of the Jimmies. “It makes for a long week trying to figure out where we’re at.

“The bad thing about losing is that it feels terrible, but the good thing is that now we’ll look at ourselves and wonder what’s going on. Hopefully we can learn from this.”

The Jimmies put together another balanced offensive attack against the Vikings as Sarah Becker, Heather Brown and Katie Zent recorded 12 kills apiece.

Jada Meiklejohn paced the squad with 23 assists and Kelsey Deragisch finished with 21. Both also led the team with two aces from the service line.

“We did a good job in that fourth set,” Hegerle said. “Once we got down we did a nice job to come back.

“We had our chances in that fifth set but we just didn’t make the plays we needed to make.”

Valley City State 3, Jamestown College 2

JC 25 19 17 25 13

VCSU 21 25 25 19 15

JC individual statistics

Kills, Sarah Becker 12, Heather Brown 12, Katie Zent 12, Mattie McDonald 7, Emilee Schutta 6. Assists, Jada Meiklejohn 23, Kelsey Deragisch 21. Digs, Katie Lee 23, Meiklejohn 13, Keely Gross 13, Deragisch 12. Aces, Meiklejohn 2, Deragisch 2. Blocks, Brown 1, Alex Hanson 1.

Sun sports writer David Griswold can be reached at (701) 952-8462 or by e-mail at dgriswold@jamestownsun.com. Griswold can be followed on Twitter at www.twitter.com/dgriswoldjssun

Tags: sports, jimmies, volleyball