By RYAN ARENA

L’Observateur

Riverside coach Kristy Hebert sees her team scratching the surface of its potential. Now, she hopes to see it bust on through.

Never was it more readily apparent than this past week, when Riverside fell in two matches to highly ranked foes. On Thursday, the Rebels fell to the second ranked team in Division IV, De La Salle, 25-15, 23-25, 26-16, 15-25, 15-13 in Reserve.

On Tuesday, seventh ranked Dunham topped Riverside in four games in another match between potential Division IV playoff foes at Dunham.

“I see us getting better,” said Hebert. “In fact, those were probably the best two matches we’ve played this season. So our potential is very apparent.”

But in each match, Hebert felt her team couldn’t finish despite being in position to win – particularly against De La Salle, when Riverside led by three at one point in the fifth and deciding game.

“We shanked some serves, a little miscue on defense tied the game, and we let them take control by our own errors,” said Hebert.

“We’ve been our own worst enemy at times. We still aren’t mentally there in terms of finishing games.”

Serves were an issue for Riverside as Hebert noted, a surprise the coach says because that aspect is normally one of the team’s strengths.

“We played really well at the net,” said Hebert. “But in contrast, we slacked off on our serves.

“We missed about seven. If we don’t give up those seven points, we win.”

Kaitlyn Millet had 18 kills and 14 assists to lead Riverside. Shea LaFountain added 13 kills of her own and 20 digs. Shelby Deslatte had 18 digs and Aimee Williamson had 13 assists.

For De La Salle, Sarah Oster had 57 digs and Chelsea Triechett had 50 assists. Jonne Porter had 19 kills.

Against Dunham, LaFountain had eight kills for the Rebels. Millet had 10 assists. Deslatte had two aces and 22 digs.

Hebert said her team had a different look against Dunham than later in the week – while her team’s defensive game was ahead of the offense against De La Salle, the situation was reversed two days prior.

“If we’d have played the same offensive game we did against Dunham on Thursday, we beat De La Salle,” said Hebert. “We moved it around a lot. I thought we were pretty locked in offensively. Defensively, we were out of position far too often. We made too many errors.

“As I keep stressing to them, this team has what it takes. It’s just a matter of putting it all together.”