Author Archives: Kevin Bowman

Standing outside the locker room following the UCLA men’s volleyball’s season-ending loss, senior setter Kyle Caldwell, a captain and an emotional rock throughout the season, looked broken.

Nearly three months ago, UCLA men’s volleyball faced Stanford and Pacific to open the regular season. Fittingly, the same teams will meet in this weekend’s season finale and the Bruins, having swept the first meetings, are hoping for similar outcomes to truly bring their season full circle.

After Saturday’s sweep of UC Irvine, the team that sent UCLA into its three-week long skid, the Bruins seem to have regained their poise.

Redshirt sophomore libero Evan Mottram yelled as he drop-kicked the ball into the wall. Tension was in the air after a missed dig during practice. But this late in the season, tension is unavoidable for UCLA men’s volleyball, which will play in its final two regular season home games this weekend.

Chasing an errant ball in the third set, senior setter Kyle Caldwell barreled into a water cooler, spilling its contents across the floor. As the janitors began mopping up the mess, USC continued mopping up a sloppy UCLA team.

After defeating the team that gave it the most trouble this season, Long Beach State, UCLA now sets its sights on the team that gave it the least.

Long Beach State’s men’s volleyball team was dripping with confidence entering Wednesday’s match against UCLA. Two weeks earlier, it handed UCLA its first loss in conference play and ended its 10-match winning streak. Twenty minutes into Wednesday’s game, however, the 49ers’ poise was gone, their cheers from the sideline replaced with stony silence.