The frustrating grunts echoed through the Harry West Gym along with the sheer face of disappointment could be seen from the San Diego City College’s men’s volleyball team, as the Knights were defeated 3-0 (25-11, 25-12, 25-23) by El Camino College in the home opener on Feb. 13.

“It’s frustrating because I know we can play a lot better — we just need more fire and we didn’t have that tonight,” said freshman Lucas Timm.

After losing their first two sets against the Warriors, the Knights were able to bounce back and started the third set with some urgency as they were poised to make a comeback in the match.

During the third set, the Knights went on a 11-4 run and were able to hold the lead against the Warriors up until the very end as El Camino came back and tied it at 23 and then went on to get the final two points for the victory.

“I think in the beginning we started off too jittery and too hesitant; we didn’t capitalize on a lot of good sets that we had and also our passing didn’t start off very well but near the end of the game — in the third set we started committing and we played very well and we passed better and it showed because we only lost by two points,” said freshman Kyle Taylor.

Taylor finished the game by leading the team with 13 points, recorded 10 kills, six digs and had two solo blocks.

With the loss to El Camino, it pushed the Knights into a four game losing streak to begin the season.

Taylor went on to express that the team needs to find a way to begin their games like how they started their third set against El Camino and is looking forward to the next couple of weeks at practice so the team can improve and flip their season around.

“We start practice at 6:40 every morning, Monday through Friday and I feel that we have to come out strong every day at practice — no time to wake up, we just have to go out there and go ‘balls to the walls’,” Taylor added.

“With a young talented squad, I feel the sky is the limit for this group of student athletes. At practice we are still working on the basic fundamentals of volleyball,” said Head Coach Kevin Pratte. “We have to take care of our side of the net. We are playing very talented teams, but we are making their job easy by committing many hitting and serving errors.”

In the game against the Warriors, the Knights committed a total of 28 hitting errors and 11 serving errors.

Pratte also expressed that the main focus in the next couple of weeks at practice will be making sure the team improves on their swings and more importantly finding a way to keep their composure when things get out of hand during a match.

As the Knights are looking toward getting out of their early season slump, they will also be looking toward defending their home court once again as they will be playing their first conference game of the season against Irvine Valley College on Feb. 25 at 6 p.m.