After a fifth-place finish at nationals a year ago, the men’s club volleyball team headed into the season with bigger and better goals.

The Warhawks tied for 41st place in the National Collegiate Volleyball Federation’s national tournament last weekend in Houston.

They were part of the Division I pool, which had 48 teams.

With how much talent the ’Hawks brought into the tournament, injuries, however, paid too much of a toll on them.

“We had a lot of injuries this year,” president Keith Scheckel said. “Our No. 1 hitter, Mark Haertle, who was second-team all-conference, had shoulder surgery and played through it all year. Setter James Bradley had back and knee problems, while senior Kori Vernon had an Achilles problem about a week before the state tournament.”

Playing well in the regular season, their expectations heading into the tournament were to place in the gold bracket, which consists of the top 16 teams.

They came short, though, and finished in the bronze bracket.

“I’m disappointed in the finish, I mean, we played well for most of the season, but there were just too many injuries,” Scheckel said.

The ’Hawks started out the tournament very well with two wins in its first three matches, but after that, things started to get rough.

“The first match of the day we beat the overall No. 5 seed University of California Santa Barbara and then lost to James Madison,” Scheckel said. “We then faced the No. 4 seed in Texas A&M and won, but then things went downhill from there.”

From that point on, it was a must win situation.

“We had a pretty tough challenge in UW-Milwaukee,” Scheckel said. “Whoever won that had the chance to go to the gold bracket or the silver bracket, but we lost that match in two sets.”

The ’Hawks then fell to the consolation bracket, where they lost all its matches.

“We just played terrible in the rest of the tournament,” Scheckel said. “We couldn’t even win a match after beating Santa Barbara and Texas A&M.”

The ’Hawks finished the season with a conference record of 9-5 and placed third in the conference tournament.