A new season brings new hope for the Quinnipiac women’s volleyball team. After years of struggling in the Northeast Conference, never recording a winning season, the Bobcats look to turn things around this year. But the first weekend of play didn’t turn out the way they planned. The Bobcats left the Loyola Marymount Invitational with a losing record of 0-3.

The Bobcats continued to receive consistent play from senior leaders Kelby Carey and Kayla Lawler. Carey totaled 17 kills during the tournament, while Lawler added 47 assists. The Bobcats are going to need to rely on these two to lead the team this season. And they appear ready, picking up right where they left off last season.

While Carey and Lawler did what they have done for the past three years, the Bobcats also received major contributions from a couple underclassmen. Freshman Krista Bennett started this weekend and finished the tournament with 15 digs, one assist and a kill.

But Bennett wasn’t the only freshman to make an impact in their first collegiate tournament. Brittanie Robinson began her career with 13 kills and seven digs in the three games. Freshmen will play a key role for the Bobcats as the season progresses and Bennett and Robinson are off to the right start. It remains to be seen if they can consistently play at a high level in their first collegiate season.

Even with the reinforcements joining Carey and Lawler the team has a while to go before it can compete with the best of the best, like UCLA. The Bobcats committed more errors than the opposing team in every game during the tournament. And it hurt them the most against Cal State Fullerton, when the Bobcats committed 22 errors compared to the Titans’ five.

Those errors severely hurt the Bobcats, especially on the offensive side. Their highest hit percentage during the tournament was .034. UCLA, on the other hand, had a low hit percentage of .170, which was still five times higher than the Bobcats’ highest.

The Bobcats even recorded a negative hit percentage, at -.012 against UCLA. It will take much better showings from the Bobcats if they have any hope of achieving their first winning season in the NEC.

If the Bobcats have any hope of coming out with any wins in the University of Maryland Invitational, they need to make major improvements prior to Friday.