The Loyola volleyball team played their last home game of the season against Spring Hill (26-3, 11-0) Tuesday night in the Den.

The team struggled to gain an edge over a 26-3 Spring Hill, who is also undefeated in the conference. Loyola lost all three sets, making their record 8-18 for the season and 5-8 in the conference.

Despite the loss, head coach Margot Frederick is pleased with her team’s performance.

“I thought we played really hard. That was something I was very proud of,” she said.

Loyola kept up with Spring Hill when it came to attacks. In the first set, both teams had 12 kills and in the third set both teams had 15.

“We addressed a few things in practice such as being aggressive on the system with our attacks and I thought we did that,” Frederick said.

Spring Hill was only able to put up four aces against Loyola when they usually averaged about 10 against other opponents. Loyola was able to deliver two aces against them.

There needs to be a transition sentence here moving from the good to the bad that Frederick talks about in her quote.

“We didn’t take great care of the ball,” said Frederick when speaking on errors and mistakes in the game. “We’ve got some things to work on.”

History pre-law senior Sabrina Stansberry agrees. She said that the team has a few things to work on going into the last games of the season.

“We’re going to serve tougher, keep our focus on our servicing, and keep being aggressive on offense,” Stansberry said.

Frederick said the team talked about different strategies for offense when the ball was served short to them. This led to the team making adjustments on the court.

There was a change in momentum in the third set when Loyola was leading by two points. The Pack made adjustments to their service game, which affected Spring Hill’s outside hitter, Megan Haber, who averages 11 kills per game.

She was only able to get five kills against Loyola. Fredrick credited Haber’s limited success to adjustments Loyola made to their service game.

That gave the women the boost they needed to stay close to Spring Hill.

“Us being able to neutralize a major hitter like that, especially someone that good in the conference, it should be a confidence booster to us,” Frederick said.

This last home game of the season brought energy to the team, especially for seniors.

“The emotion that I had fueled my fire,” Stansberry said.

The team faces Southern University New Orleans on Oct. 26. The women plan to use their experience from the Spring Hill game to help them through the remainder of the season.

Stansberry said the match against Spring Hill was a learning experience that will help them as they close out the last two games of the season.

“It was just another test to see how much better we have gotten in preparation for our last conference game,” she said.

Raven Richard can be reached at [email protected]