The Lady Roadrunners suffered their eighth loss of the season on Wednesday evening as the San Diego City Knights pranced into the Rio Hondo Gym and won in three straight sets.

The sweep looks lopsided on paper, yet the Roadrunners were in contention for all three sets. Mental errors made the difference as the Knights stayed composed throughout the match to win in cool fashion.

“Looking at it statistically, offensively we did our job,” said head coach Teddi Esko, “But defensively, we didn’t execute our plan. We didn’t dig enough balls. We didn’t stop them at the net like we intended and these things hurt us.”

Playing within the system is one of Coach Esko’s main focuses for winning games. In order for it to work though, Esko mentioned that every individual needs to do its job and that’s something the Lady Roadrunners lacked.

“We were a mess. We’re a team that’s still lacking confidence and ability to rebound when we make a mistake and it’s a process. And we’re working with the team on that. The capability is there,” said the Lady Roadrunners Head Coach.

The loss on Wednesday makes it a 3-8 record for the Roadrunners who look to fix things in their next five preseason matches before switching attention to conference play beginning Oct. 4 at Pasadena City College.

“We’re going to get in the gym and keep drilling them,” said Esko, “If we can make those corrections in the training sessions we’re going to be fine. Offensively we played well but we need to tie all of our rules together.”

Despite the loss, the Lady Roadrunners did have a few positives to take into their next match at San Diego Mesa on Sept. 20. Offense was one of them and most of the production came from 5’10” sophomore, outside hitter from South Hills High School, Bree Newton. A few serving aces mixed with numerous kills and defensive plays kept the Sunny Hills graduate’s team in the game but the Knights’ quality manifested itself more than Rio’s over the three set span.

Decent games from 5’0 freshman, libero from Covina High School, Sara Harding, and freshmen setters Yaeli Sanchez (5’4 from Lincoln HS) and Mia Torres (5’4 from Montebello HS), were also positives. The Lady Roadrunners must play better as a group, however, in order to continue making progress.