Untimely miscues cost Garden City at Indy

By Mike Pilosof

Photo by Adam Shrimplin

Independence, KS-Coach Patrick Hiltz said it was arguably the sloppiest match he'd seen all year.

Garden City had 23 attacking errors, which culminated in the team's fifth straight loss, a four-set defeat to Independence Wednesday night 23-25, 22-25, 25-18, 21-25.

"We got everything we wanted tonight from a game-planning perspective," Hiltz said afterwards. "But once again, we couldn't execute."

Garden City had leads in both the first and second sets but couldn't hold them. And after breaking through in the third, the Broncbusters once again coughed up the advantage in the final frame.

"Tonight, it was all about the basics," Hiltz explained. "We served into the net, or didn't hit our spots on serve all night long. We even mixed in some free ball passes out of bounds. We were just bad at volleyball tonight."

The Broncbusters, who had won four of their previous six matches before this latest stretch, had nine service errors on the night.

"When both of our middles hit negative percentages, it's impossible to win," Hiltz said. "We just didn't compete very well tonight. We are making the same mistakes with three weeks left in the season that we were making at the beginning of the year-as if we don't work on things in practice."

Alexandra Jackson paced the Broncbusters with 20 digs, Katie McHugh had 32 assists, and Katarina Vojvodic tallied 13 kills.

Next up: Garden City travels to Butler on Friday, the same team they ended a 42-match losing streak to bac on Sept. 4. Match time set for 6:30 p.m.