The Lady Trojans volleyball team beat the San Jose City College Jaguars 3-0 on Friday, Sept. 20, as the road to growth as a team continues before the league play starts.

The Lady Trojans started off the first period with two quick aces, but shortly after that the Jaguars came right back with two aces to tie the game at two. As the first period and the game, wore on, the big key to the
game was the Lady Trojanses communication with each other as a team.

First assistant Ken Parker talked about their biggest issues in which they can improve on before league play starts. “They communicated enough, but can improve as most of the sophomore starters did not play tonight,” Parker said.

Most of the Lady Trojan starters were out with injuries in Friday’s game, so it was mostly ayoung and inexperienced group playing together.

However, that inexperience proved not to hurt the Lady Trojans in the first period as they began later to communicate and rotate better as a unit, eventually winning the first period, 25-19. During the second period, the game took on a much different tone. The Lady Trojans jumped to an early lead with a seven to two start to take control of the game. After that start, the Jaguars had to call a timeout.

After the timeout, the Jaguars returned to the game with a different mindset but it still didn’t help as the Trojans were more dominant in the second period than any other period in the match. They had a 14-5 match
lead. The lead would slim down to 18-13 as the Lady Trojans began to become very sloppy.

The skill and leadership of freshman Jacqueline Brandt helped rally and kept the Lady Trojans on track to win the second period, 25-20. Going into the third and final period, the Lady Trojans once again came out firing to
take a quick four-to-nothing lead.

The Jaguars came back with flurries of their own and got it back to 10-8 where Coach Beth Perkins had to call a timeout to tell her team to finish the game.

From there it was a straight grind. Both teams were going back and forth with the Lady Trojans calling another timeout at 17-16 where the Trojans had the lead. Once again, they rallied and found their grit and won a tough game 25-22.

The Lady Trojan volleyball team may be young but they’re discovering their team chemistry, which is going to keep helping them get better on their journey.