Comets drop tough match at home

Cottey College freshman Lindsey Webb returns a serve Wednesday during a match against the Longview Community College Lakers.--Ralph Pokorny/Daily Mail

The Cottey College Comets suffered their fifth loss of the season as they fell in three sets to the seventh-ranked Longview Community College Lakers.

The Lakers got on the board first in the opening set, but the Comets were able to stay close through the beginning portion of the set until a serve that didn't make it over the net started a 3-0 Longview run that put the score at 13-10. another quick 3-0 run extended the lead to 16-11 and the Comets were never able to come back.

Another short run of four points near the end of the set opened up the Longview lead to 21-12 and the two teams traded points for the remainder of the set, leading to a 25-16 Lakers victory. "Those short runs really got us," head coach Marla Kannady Foreman said.

Set two started out in much the same manner as Longview recorded the first two points before Cottey was able to put together a 5-0 run to take the lead. The match stayed even for the next eight serves before a one-point penalty against Longview for a player serving out of rotation gave the Comets a 10-8 lead.

The Lakers recovered quickly and went on a 3-0 run to take the lead and the two teams again started to trade points, with Longview getting the better of the exchanges and slowly pulling out a point at a time. Cottey was able to put together a couple of small runs of their own to eventually knot up the score at 20-20, but couldn't quite pull off the win as the Lakers took the set 25-22.

Longview pulled out to another 2-0 lead to start what turned out to be the final set of the match and the Comets were again able to pull even, but were shut down from there. The Lakers quickly came to life and went on a 6-0 run to take the lead 8-2 and never looked back.

The two teams again started to exchange points, but Longview continually got the better of the exchanges, taking two or three points to Cottey's one. The Comets still continued to play hard, but were unable to dig their way out of the hole and the Lakers took the set 25-14 and with it, the match.

After the match, Foreman still kept her head high and came out smiling. "I told the girls, I said 'you've got nothing to hang your heads about," she said. Facing a team of this caliber, the Comets knew that they would have a tough night ahead of them and still continued to play and ended up giving a very strong Lakers team all they could handle.

Foreman said that she and her players knew coming in who the tough players were on the Longview team and continuously tried to play away from those members of the team and were "solidly playing hard." Foreman did admit that there were some costly mistakes made in the match, but still had nothing negative to say of the team's performance on the night.

"I couldn't ask for anything more," she said. With the loss, the Comets' record falls to 14-5 on the season and they are scheduled to be in action again tomorrow as they travel to Kansas City, Kan.