The Lady Lions faced off against McNeese on Sept. 27, winning 3-1 (26-28, 25-22, 25-23, 25-18).

During the first meeting of the match, the team went point-for-point with McNeese, but ultimately lost by two.

Losing the first set made the Lady Lions regain focus and work hard in the proceeding rounds. Outside hitter and reigning Southland Conference Player of the Week Kailin Newsome explained the team was not expecting the loss in the first round.

“We definitely didn’t expect to lose the first set, so that really put a fire under our butts to go and win the next three,” Newsome said.

The junior standout is averaging 4.43 points per set, good for top in the conference.

Head Coach Jeremy White was pleased with the team’s comeback after going down the first game of the match.

“I’m just proud of the way we were able to flip the script. We didn’t do that against HBU, but we were able to do it against Corpus. Today we started off on a low, but we did a great job bringing that intensity and effort and going back and just grinding through that first set and then we got it rolling from there,” White said.

For the next three sets, the ladies played hard and overpowered McNeese. 

“We’re all working hard and just doing our job that we need to be doing. It’s much overplaying, everyone is just doing the job that we need them to do at the moment, and we come into practice every day and work really hard, and I think that’s proving its point in the games,” outside hitter Cicily Hidalgo said.

Hidalgo, the 2021 Southland Conference Freshman of the Year, produced 16 kills for Southeastern on the night against the Cowgirls, falling one short of her season high.

Going into their next match, Newsome said she feels the team needs to work on being consistent in their play throughout the game. 

“I think we just really need to figure out how to keep our energy high all the time. Sometimes when we get down, we tend to lose all our energy and that makes us even worse than we were. So, if we can learn how to keep our energy up we’ll be fine,” Newsome said.

The team will hit the road for their next matchup against UNO on Sept. 29.