The UCI Women’s Volleyball team (10-6, 3-3) lost 3-0 against the University of Hawai’i Rainbow Wahine (9-5, 5-0) at the SimpliFi Arena at Stan Sheriff Center in Honolulu, Hawai’i on Friday, Oct. 7. The Anteaters were unable to gain any momentum in the disappointing three set defeat.
UCI got off to a rough start during the first set. By the looks of the players, emotions were running rampant and things weren’t going their way. UCI made a few costly mistakes early on, which turned into points for the University of Hawai’i. Not long afterwards, with UH up 12-6, UCI head coach Ashlie Hain called a timeout — the first of many throughout the game. Hawai’i won the first set, 25-17.
The Anteaters started the second set with determination and a fighting spirit. Before any team took the lead for themselves, the score stayed consistent with one team scoring a point each. This created great tension as the audience and Hawai’i got to witness better plays and competitiveness from the Anteaters.
After a long rally, Hawai’i found themselves with a 4-3 lead. Soon after, UCI tied it up and then took a one-point lead, 5-4. At this point, UCI’s defense had significantly improved; however, so had UH’s. Aggressive offensive plays at the net came from both UH and UCI.
The mistakes made by Irvine had gone down tremendously compared to the first set, and at the next media timeout they only trailed 15-14. You could see from the players and their executions of the plays that this wasn’t something that was going to be let up easily. You could feel the competitiveness rise as more aggression was shown.
Coming out of the break, UCI scored a controversial point that was challenged and overturned, giving the point to Hawai’i and putting them up two. That point turned out to be a critical moment in the set, as it was all Hawai’i from there. The Rainbow Wahine rallied, forcing UCI to call another timeout, and eventually took the set 25-19.
The final set of the game started with Hawai’i picking up right where they left off, scoring the first three points without any pushback from UCI. Once UCI was finally able to put some points on the board, their lead was immediately taken back, as the momentum of the game swung back to the Rainbow Wahine.
Irvine made a mistake with a player’s foot accidently touching the other side of the court, giving the advantage to Hawai’i. Although it was a mistake, Irvine did not let up by giving Hawai’i full swing aggressive hits, getting the ball once again. It didn’t take long for Hawai’i to take it right back without a fight. Coach Hain called a timeout after Hawai’i had double the amount of points as Irvine, making the score 10-5.
After the timeout, Hawai’i was put ahead again 16-11, leading to another Anteater timeout. Coming out of the timeout, Hawai’i scored six unanswered points to put them ahead 23-12. Irvine scored off a nice kill; however, that would be their last point of the night as Hawai’i ended the match with a 25-13 victory.
With the win, Hawai’i improved to 44-1 all time and 5-0 in the Big West Conference. The Anteaters fell to 3-3 in the conference and are tied fourth place in the standings.
Seattle Barron is a Sports Intern for the fall 2022 quarter. She can be reached at skbarron@uci.edu.
