Glendora, CA (Volleyball) -- When the band U2 wrote their 1987 seminal hit “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For,” they were searching for something with a deeper meaning of life. While the Citrus College Volleyball team isn’t quite at that point, there may be no more appropriate theme song for the team as they suffered their fifth straight loss to open up the year on Tuesday evening, and find themselves still searching for a win in the 2009 season.
Things started off ok enough for the Lady Owls in their Western State Conference Cross-Divisional match-up with Oxnard College. In the first set of their five set loss, Citrus jumped all over the Condors early, running out to a 10-2 lead after an Oxnard attack error. Though Oxnard would settle down, Citrus would cruise to a 25-21 victory in the first set closing it with a Tatiana Quiocho ace.
After a stirring performance in the first game, Citrus came out flat in the second. After keeping it to within a few points early on, Oxnard would go on a 15-6 run to close the second set and take a 25-13 victory. 16 of Oxnard’s points in the set would come off of Citrus errors.
In the third, Citrus looked as if they might rebound staying neck and neck with Oxnard until a kill by the Condor’s Dominique Franz jump started an 8-3 run that eventually led to them taking the third set by a score of 25-20.
Facing their biggest adversity of the season, Citrus responded taking an early 10-5 lead after a kill by Sophomore Coco Holliday. From that point forward Citrus would run away with the set scoring 15 of the final 23 points to snag a 25-13 win and force a fifth game.
With momentum on their side, Citrus would stay even with Oxnard through the first six points. That’s when Oxnard caught fire, scoring six unanswered points and taking a commanding 10-4 lead.
The Lady Owls would try and move back into the game by scoring three straight times towards the end of the match, but it was Oxnard’s Franz who put the game away for a good with a kill that made the score 15-11 in favor of the Condors.
In the loss, Citrus was led by Lindsey Mitchell who had a game high 12 kills. Sophomore Coco Holliday had arguably one of her best matches as a Lady Owls with a career high eight kills, while Danica Lawrence added three solo blocks.
With the loss, Citrus falls to 0-5 on the season, while Oxnard improves to 4-0. The Lady Owls will hit the road on Friday to continue their cross-divisional schedule as they travel to North to take on Cuesta College. Game time is set for 6:00 PM.
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