The toughest conference in the state only means that everyone will get better and better with each match.

At least that’s what the El Camino beach volleyball team is thinking after dropping back-to-back matches against MiraCosta College and Long Beach City College on Friday.

The team headed to Belmont Shore for what might be the toughest day of the season thus far, and upcoming.

MCC and LBCC are both undefeated against community colleges and are in essence two of top three teams in the state, with EC falling just short of that at No. 5, based on record.

“We played better today, than we did against Grossmont (last Friday),” EC coach Le Valley Pattison said. “We weren’t as tight, but we need to limit unforced errors.”

EC lost both matches against MiraCosta and Long Beach 3-2 in match score.

While the Warriors could have avoided a loss against MCC, it would have fallen on the hands of freshman Aiko Waters and sophomore Kiana Takahashi. Unfortunately, the unforced errors that Pattison mentioned hurt them in clutch time.

Sophomore Victoria Curtice and freshman Megan Lim make up the No. 3 pair for EC and were the only bright spot in today’s losses, as they won both of their respective matches.

Practice not being worked on hard enough.

That seemed to be a theme to today’s matches.

“Megan and I saw our potential of what we can be by the end of the season,” Curtice said. “Recently, we haven’t been practicing as hard as we should be.”

The brightest pair all season long has been sophomores Taylor Brydon and Brooklyn Rubio.

Going in to Friday’s matches, they hadn’t lost a set, or even a single match.

But things didn’t go their way today as they lost back-to-back matches and got swept along the way.

“In the beginning, we weren’t playing at our normal pace and it was just frustration after frustration,” Brydon said. “Once we started to pick it up, it was almost too late in the game. But today was a good learning experience.”