The women’s volleyball team failed to capitalize on early game leads and ultimately fell to the Orange Coast Pirates.

The Lady Hornets lost in five sets (21-25, 24-26, 25-16, 25-22, 11-15) on Wednesday night in the South Gym.

While the Lady Hornets were able to stretch this match to five games and bring it down to the wire, their inability to maintain leads and put away their opponent early is what led to their demise.

“We weren’t able to finish,” said Jason Dillard, associate head coach of the Lady Hornets. “We didn’t finish game one or game two and fell short in the fifth set.”

Fell short was an understatement for the Lady Hornets after tonight. In the first game, they held a lead of 19-14, and in the second game they were up 18-9. In both sets they fell, 21-25 and 24-26 respectively.

A combination of unforced errors, and multiple failures to communicate between teammates is what helped land the Lady Hornets in the 0-2 hole.

“You could hear a pin drop during the middle of a rally, and that’s not what volleyball is,” Dillard said. “It needs to be a lot of communication and a lot of energy, and we didn’t have any of those things tonight.”

While the Lady Hornets began the match with a lack of enthusiasm or energy, they didn’t intend on leaving the game without making the Pirates work for their victory.

In the third set, sophomore Alex Winfield led the Lady Hornets with five kills and at one point she racked up three straight points to give her team an 8-3 lead.

Grace Lopez and Azucena Duarte contributed a pair of kills each to help them cruise to a 25-16 game victory for the Lady Hornets.

The fourth set proved no different as Winfield and Lopez again assaulted OCC with a combined 12 kills, which were set up nicely by sophomore Carly Bergen.

They would go on to take the fourth set 25-22 and force a fifth and final game.

Although momentum seemed to have shifted in favor of the Lady Hornets, they were yet again unable to hold their lead. After jumping to a 7-2 lead and getting a couple big kills from Shawnee Longmeyer, the Lady Hornets lost their rhythm and lost the final set 11-15.

Dillard summed it up for the Lady Hornets by saying it’s hard to practice having energy and being excited to compete but it’s something they intend to work on improving.

The Lady Hornets (11-7, 6-4) host Irvine Valley (12-4, 9-1) on Friday at 6 p.m. in the South Gym.