Aug. 22—LAURINBURG — After being swept by West Brunswick in their first game of the season, the Scotland volleyball team (0-2) looked for redemption and a win against the Lumberton Pirates (2-0) on Monday night.

What they got instead was the same result they suffered in their season opener.

Lumberton had a come-from-behind win in the first set, a dominant victory in set two, and prevailed in set three as Scotland was defeated 3-0.

"I'm going to quit talking about growing pains because at this point now, even two games in and three weeks into practice, the growing has got to change," Romaine said. "I think we had at least 24 unforced errors in the three sets that we've got calculated. That's a whole game we gave away. We've just got to be better than that."

The Lady Scots started the first set down 4-1 before eventually taking a 10-9 lead over the Pirates. Scotland began to pull away with a 20-16 advantage and were just two points away from claiming the set when they led 23-21.

However, Lumberton scored five of the last six points and took the set 26-24.

"We just lost our composure," Romaine said. "We don't have that push to put anybody away or to push that run when we get a run; how to continue to push it further. Our pushes have been when we're down seven, eight, or nine points, and we push six or seven straight to get ourselves back in it, and then we just lose composure again. We don't know how to pull away, like push six or seven to get a good lead, and then continue to just keep the throttle down. But we're learning."

Scotland's woes from the end of the first set carried over into the second set after they went down 11-2. While the Lady Scots attempted to crawl back into it, their effort wasn't enough as they fell 25-17.

The third set started with more of the same from Lumberton as they went up 13-8 and built their lead up to 19-14. But from that point, the Lady Scots outscored the Pirates 7-1 to lead 21-20.

Lumberton erased Scotland's short-lived advantage by going up 24-22, and after Scotland scored the following three points, the Pirates scored four of the last five to win the set 28-26.

"Tonight, (a) huge amount of mental mistakes," Romaine said. "We made a run, and we cut it to 20-19, and then we come out of the timeout their coach calls to stop our momentum, and we just don't know how to finish."

Addison Johnson had 14 kills, 10 digs, and three aces for Scotland; Reagan Malpass had 28 assists, seven kills, and four digs, Madison Dixon had 15 assists and two digs, and Nateya Scott had eight digs.

Alona Hanna led the Pirates with nine kills and three aces, Leira Smith had 12 assists, Ava Hanna had six kills, and Charley Whitley had 11 digs.

Scotland continues nonconference play at Purnell Swett on Wednesday.

Romaine said the game will be his team's biggest test so far this season.

"That's a tough atmosphere," Romaine said. "I don't care how great we are, how great they are, how bad we are, how bad they are — that's just a tough atmosphere. We haven't been in that atmosphere in about three or four years since the conference realignment. It's always a tough place to go play (at). I actually got to see them at the scrimmage with Lumberton a couple of weeks ago, and they're a mirror image of Lumberton. So (if) we play like we played tonight, we're possibly coming back home 0-3."