Jasmijn Dikmans is an ASU Cronkite School of Journalism student assigned to cover Tempe High School for AZPreps365.com

Despite playing a “sloppy and scrappy” game against Yuma High School, the Tempe Buffaloes girls volleyball team won 3-1 Monday night on their home court.

The game started slow for the Buffaloes. They won their first and second sets, but lost focus and gave away the third set to winless Yuma. With a difference of just five points in the fourth set, Tempe managed to win the match.

“Sometimes you’ve got to win ugly,” Doug Kiefer, head coach of the Buffaloes, said.

During the meeting the team had after the game, the players hung their heads, staring into the ground. Brigitte Masoka, a junior outside and opposite hitter on the team, said  it was not a good match. Masoka said it was “embarrassing” that the Buffaloes lost the third set against a team that had not won a match this season.

Kiefer said it was the team’s mental game that caused the loss in the third set. He said that he feels confident about his team winning a set, even if it is down by five points. However, the Buffaloes got behind 8-2, which included serving two balls into the net and miscommunicating during the plays. Kiefer decided to take a time out at that point to “refocus.”

“We weren’t mentally prepared,” Kiefer said. “People need to come here more determined to play and do their best, not making error after error after error.”

“In the third set, we let them have it, almost,” outside hitter Karla Ortega said.

Ortega, one of the nine seniors on the team, had 10 aces and four kills during the game. She said a lot of the Tempe players could not move on from their mistakes. She said the team was so focused on winning the game that it overlooked the open spots to score points. Ortega saidthe players got into their own heads and that there was a lot of negativity among them in the third set.

“A lot of people couldn’t move on from their mistakes and I feel like we weren’t playing really smart,” Ortega said.

Kiari Montanez-Woods, a senior middle hitter, said Tempe players were not focused, and the team's energy could have been better. Montanez-Woods, who scored 11 kills and two blocks in the match, said Tempe played down to its competition.

Going into the fourth set, Tempe’s focus was on the “first contact,” which means serving with a high percentage and making good passes to the setter to attack, Kiefer said. In the fourth set, the Buffaloes hit three aces and were able to score seven points out of good passes from the setters.

“I had high energy and I tried to get my friends to have that energy,” Tempe's Hailey Santos said. “It changed the game because we wanted to be here and win the game.”

Santos is a libero and also one of the seniors on the team. She said energy and consistency go together during a game. Santos said she was not consistent at the beginning of the match, but pulled herself through it and realized that her plays did not define her as a person. After recognizing that, she found her positive energy again.

Ortega also felt the shift in energy too during the winning set. She hopes the players will be more supportive of each other in the upcoming matches.

With only 16 days left in the season, Kiefer wants the seniors to realize that their high school careers are going to be over soon. However, he thinks it has not sunk into the seniors yet. Kiefer said the seniors must make the best of the remaining days. He told the team he wants the players to “take it to their hearts” and support the seniors during their last weeks with the team.

The Buffaloes have four matches left in the season. They will face Yuma again in their final match.

Tempe will next play Oct. 21 against Cortez in Phoenix. In their last match against the Colts, the Buffaloes won 3-0.