Karen Boehler — NMMI Sports Press

The last time the Bronco volleyball team faced Odessa (18-2, 7-0), the Wranglers were ranked No. 5 in the nation. Saturday, in their first home game this season, NMMI (11-7, 4-2) again faced Odessa. This time, they were ranked No. 2 national, but for much of the match, it looked the the Institute should be ranked up there as well. 

But a familiar pattern emerged, and the Broncos fell in four, 19-25, 25-21, 25-14, 25-20.

"We start strong against everyone," said coach Shelby Forchtner. "We clearly beat everybody in the first set. Pretty easily."

And that was what happened Saturday. The teams went back and forth early, tied on almost every other point until NMMI finally pulled ahead 13-11, then stretched the lead to 18-13 and 21-15, before getting the victory.

"We just served really, really tough in the first set, and I think that was the major difference between (first two) sets," Forchtner said. "We kept them out of system the whole first set. We got more easy tempo balls. And we knew as soon as the first set was going to be over; we even talked about it in our huddle: 'Don't expect this to go on the entire match. They're going to get in a rhythm. They're going to start passing the ball.' Then they're going to start making a lot more passes offensively once they start passing the ball, which is exactly what they did."

Game 2 was almost a mirror image of the first one, with ties up to 15-15. Then Odessa pulled ahead by four on some unforced errors by the Broncos. NMMI got an unexpected point of an official call that Wrangler coach Kristi Gray vehemently disputed — getting her a yellow card — then the Institute pulled to 23-20 before the sides traded the final three points, giving Odessa the victory.

Game 3 was mostly all Wranglers, back and forth scoring only through 5-5, then Odessa putting together several long point strings before getting the win.

The Broncos were still playing hard and getting some solid kills — especially from Julia Johnson, who led the way with 14 for the match — but they also did themselves in.

"We were just doing a lot of things to ourselves. It wasn't even them doing things to us," the coach said. "It was just making a lot of little mistakes and making a few too many errors."

Game 4 was probably the most disappointing loss, as NMMI was in control almost all the way.

There were three ties early, but then the Broncos slowly started pulling ahead, going up as much as 18-12 late. But then the Wranglers put up runs of six and seven points to turn things around and take the win.

"We just had a few people kind of break down towards the end," Forchtner said. "As the set goes on, you need people to get more and more confident, not get scared. And that's what happened to us. We had a few people break down a little bit and we couldn't make up for it. It's like everybody kind of followed the bad leader, instead of somebody stepping up and putting the ball down and us finishing out that set to push it to five."

Odessa got most of their points off good defense and strong blocking that they hadn't showed much of in the prior sets.

"We had our chances on our home floor to take that game, and it was really just us," the coach said. "They blocked a lot of balls in that last set to win that match, but that still is us doing something we hadn't done the entire game. We told them what we needed to do offensively, then in this last moment, we had people who'd do the opposite, so then it made it easy for them. We hadn't done that."

Behind Johnson's 14 kills, the Broncos had three players with even each: Marian Ovalle, Vittoria Price and Darcy Dodd. NMMI got serrving aces from Johnson (2) and Price, Cassidy Nixon and Tiffinay Gauspohl, who each had one. Gauspohl led with 16 set assists.

On defense, Johnson led with 15 digs while Jalen Baca had 14, Marian Ovalle nine and Gauspohl seven.

With the only conference losses to Odessa, and all the remaining games at NMMI, Forchtner said the team is happy to be home.

"It's nice to be able to go play a match and then walk away from it for a second, as when you're on the road constantly you're never able to get away from volleyball," she said, "Now we get to go decompress. And then we'll come out here and start working again Monday. It's nice to finally be home and get to play games here and not have to be on the go constantly."

And the coach said the plan for the remaining conference games — beginning with one Wednesday evening vs. West Texas — is simple.

"I would like to win every game in three. That's the plan."