By Marshall Tempest
Reporter
This week, the Apopka boys volleyball team’s Cinderella season ended with a loss to the Timber Creek Wolves in the first round of the state tournament.
The Blue Darters lost to the Wolves at home in straight sets after willing their way into the tournament with a district championship.
Head coach Brian Mater said that after the loss, the emotions were extremely volatile for the coaching staff and the team.
“You know, we have eight seniors on this team, and for many of them, this was their last game on the court,” Mater said. “Many of them are not going to play in another volleyball game. They’re pretty much done.”
Mater said the team knew it wouldn’t be easy facing the third-ranked team in the state and the 13th-ranked team nationally. But he said Apopka had more room to win the match than the final score shows.
The Blue Darters lost in three straight sets, 25-18, 25-18, and 25-22. The scores don’t reflect how closely the two teams battled. Apopka showed moments where outshone the Wolves, but ultimately, they beat themselves with a series of errors and mistakes.
Serving errors, out-of-bounds, and an inconsistent sense of urgency when going for the ball cost Apopka the game.
“We knew that we needed to limit our errors. Once again, we had top players who were netting the balls,” Mater said. “At one time, I counted 14 errors. Our errors killed us again.”
Mistakes and miscues gave the Wolves half of their points, while Apopka had to earn theirs the hard way.
“You cannot play a team of that caliber and create that many errors,” Mater said. “You might get away with one or two, but you can’t have one guy serving the ball, and five times it hits the net or goes out of bounds. You can’t do it.”
Mater said that as good a team as the Wolves are, he thinks with minimal errors, the Blue Darters would have taken at least one of those sets, which might have changed the momentum of the entire match.
They had a chance in sets two and three to surprise the Wolves, but errors and a lack of focus scuttled those chances.
In set two, Apopka was up 9-5, and after a Timber Creek timeout, the Wolves went on a 5-1 run to tie the game at 10-10 after a handful of Apopka mistakes.
In the third set, it was neck and neck, with each team scoring each possession. The set saw nine lead changes.
Late in set three, in a win-or-go-home situation, Apopka was up 17-15, but within minutes, they were behind 22-20.
Mater said the team didn’t look as confident in themselves as they did in the district tournament.
Apopka had already faced two programs, Windermere and West Orange, that were way above their caliber and dominated in the district tournament.
But when they were up against the Wolves, they didn’t seem as assertive in their play style as they did in the district tournament.
“I think we should have stayed focused better,” Mater said. “I think we should have come together a lot better. We should have cheered each other on a little bit more and not beat ourselves up on the court.”
Mater said he also saw a lot of bad body language and energy from his team on the court, which he hadn’t seen all season.
“You can see a lot of frustration between each other,” Mater said. “We didn’t do that last week when we were down. We were five down, six down last week, and we were okay. We never turned on each other. We didn’t do what we did tonight. We didn’t lean on each other’s backs.”
After the sting of the loss subsided, Mater said he is excited for the off-season and preparing for next year.
After this year and the trials and tribulations the team went through trying to rebuild a program from scratch, he said he believes he and assistant coach Sarah Egbers will be right back in the same spot next season—fighting for a state title.
“We needed a couple of balls to go our way, and they didn’t,” Mater said. “It’s been fun. It’s been a great season. The good thing is we get to build off this and get going to next season with trust. I think these guys are going to start trusting the coaches, and they’re going to trust the program.”
