An otherwise solid weekend for No. 21 Iowa State volleyball ended in disappointment.

After showing flashes of dominance in a straight-set sweep of Ole Miss on Friday and a 3-1 defeat of Virginia on Saturday morning, the Cyclones couldn’t pull off an undefeated home weekend at the Iowa State Challenge. The Cyclones fell to Oregon State in five sets on Saturday night, leaving the team with a 2-1 record to start the season.

What makes the loss to Oregon State particularly hard to swallow for the Cyclones is the fact that the team showed serious resilience. After dropping the first two sets, Iowa State stormed back by taking the next two sets to force a fifth set. 

Up 12-11 in the final set, however, Iowa State couldn’t close the deal and ultimately lost the set 16-14 in a two-and-a-half-hour-long heart breaker. Though the loss was tough, coach Christy Johnson-Lynch saw both the match and the weekend as a great opportunity for the team to improve.

Coach Christi Johnson-Lynch’s opening statement after Iowa State’s loss to Oregon State pic.twitter.com/4B9uR61IBZ

— Jack Shover (@JackUShover) August 26, 2018

“This match was terrific,” Johnson-Lynch said. “We need to get beat in preseason, because we need to play teams that know how to expose us, so this was one of those nights.”

Despite the discouraging end, there were some positives to take away from a play standpoint. First and foremost, Johnson-Lynch said she was proud of the way the team battled back and persevered.

Senior Jess Schaben was similarly happy with how the team responded, adding that the team learned a lot about itself.

“We learned that we’re a group of fighters and that we’re not going to give up no matter what,” Schaben said.

Schaben and fellow senior Grace Lazard were arguably the two biggest standouts for Iowa State throughout the weekend. Schaben had a team-high 36 kills in three matches, while Lazard finished right behind her with 35 kills while adding 16 total blocks.

While the Cyclones expect to get good production from their two star seniors, the team can be happy in the fact that they had equally impressive production from some of the squad’s newcomers. 

In particular, new arrivals Eleanor Holthaus and Candelaria Herrera, as well as new starting setter Piper Mauck, each shined throughout the weekend.

Debuting as Cyclones this weekend, Holthaus and Herrera each impressed with 32 and 18 kills, respectively. Mauck, meanwhile, finished with a total of 125 assists on the weekend.

“I think we saw a lot of good things,” Johnson-Lynch said of the team’s new starters.

Iowa State will now look to rebound against in-state rival Northern Iowa on Wednesday before heading off to Montana for another early-season tournament, where the team will play another three games during the week.

The prospect of another four games this week coming off a long weekend sounds daunting on paper, especially coming off three games in 24 hours. However, Johnson-Lynch said the team’s approach won’t change coming off a long weekend, and they’ll have to stay locked-in and focused heading into another challenging stretch.

That could be easier said than done, given the tough nature of how the weekend ended for the Cyclones. However, the team’s players, such as Lazard, don’t sound too worried. In fact, Lazard was excited about the team’s response and what it means going forward.

“This loss isn’t the end of the world,” Lazard said. “If anything, I’m happy right now. We played so well today, and I’m just grateful right now.”

To that, Lazard issued a notice to the Big 12 conference and the nation as a whole: the Cyclones aren’t staying down.

“Big 12, national championship, we’re coming for you guys,” Lazard said.