La Grande drops five-game match to Ontario

Inconsistent is one word that would describe the La Grande Tigers volleyball team right now.

The Tigers, tied for second in the Greater Oregon League coming into Tuesday night, lost a five-game heartbreaker to Ontario 25-9, 24-26, 16-25, 25-19 and 15-17.

“We just didn’t play good enough to win tonight,”

La Grande head coach Melinda Becker said. “Serving was an issue for us tonight.”

La Grande came out and controlled the first game. The Tigers went on a 19-3 run to close it out after grabbing a 6-5 lead at the start.

Game 2 was much closer. The game saw 12 ties, and was back and forth throughout. The biggest lead of the game was just three points, which La Grande held two times at 12-9 and 15-12.

However, Ontario was able to take its second lead of the game at 20-19, and eventually closed it out to even up the match at one game apiece.

“We have to be able to finish those games out,” Becker said. “We just missed too many opportunities.”

LHS looked like a different team in Game 3, missing multiple serves and strugging with a lot of Ontario’s hits.

Ontario led the game for the most part, and went on a run late in the game to down La Grande 25-16.

La Grande played Game 4 like it did the opening game, jumping out to a 12-3 lead. Ontario came back to tie the game 14-14, but La Grande was able to buckle down this time and sent the match to a fifth game.

It looked like Ontario was going to walk away with the match when it got up 8-5 on

La Grande. But the hometown Tigers went on to score six straight points to take an 11-8 lead.

Ontario continued to battle though, and tied the match up at 14 all. Ontario ended up scoring three out of the next four points to cap off the match and get a big GOL victory against La Grande.

“We just missed way too many serves tonight. Anytime you miss that many serves and give away points you aren’t going to win any games. Serving and serve-receive are big parts of volleyball, and we didn’t do a good job of either,” Becker said.

Aleia May led the Tigers with eight kills and 17 digs, while Shelby Hasse added 13 assists.

Kaylee Gerdes and Mariah Sain each finished the match with four kills. Breanna Partney came up from the junior varsity team due to a couple of players out with the flu and contributed a lot to the team, Becker said.

La Grande will  try to rebound when the Tigers travels to Baker Thursday night for what is now a big league game with the Bulldogs.

“Our backs are against the wall now,” Becker said. “We put ourselves in a must-win situation here in the next couple of games.”