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 Hayden High School girls volleyball coach Greg Johnson said at its best, his team can play toe to toe with any opponent in the Western Slope League.

At its worst, it can lose to any team, as well, and that’s what he said happened Saturday when an unfocused effort resulted in a five-game loss on the road at West Grand.

The Mustangs defeated the Tigers, 25-23, 21-25, 18-25, 25-22, 15-10.

“It’s a disappointment for sure, but it’s one of those things that can be a learning experience,” Johnson said. “If you’re not ready to play from the first serve, you can get beat by anyone. We need to play as hard as we can, with focus and effort.”

He said serve-receive proved his team’s most glaring weakness, and unfortunately for Hayden, it was a deficiency that bled into many other areas of the game.

Poorly received serves left the team struggling just to get the ball back across the net and helped negate Hayden’s big hitters.

Morgan Bell led the team with five kills, and Aubree Haskins and Erin Koehler led the team at the net with big blocks.

None of it was enough to lift the team to a win, however.

“We were giving a lot of free balls away,” Johnson said. “We couldn’t run our offense, then we got down on ourselves and didn’t pick ourselves back up.”

Even with the loss, the Tigers are in position to close their season strong and could finish as high as second in the league.

The team travels Tuesday for a game at North Park and then will travel Friday to Meeker. The Tigers will close out their regular season Saturday, at home against Soroco.

“If we win our last three games, that will put us in position to get second, and we can have a home game to start the playoffs,” Johnson said. “It’s good to get games like this out of the way before the playoffs. We still have a good chance to do well.”