SANTA ANA - The Dons opened Orange Empire Conference competition Friday night with a straight-set loss to Golden West College. The Rustlers (7-0, 1-0) defeated the Dons (3-6, 0-1) with the final set scores of 25-6, 25-14 and 25-16.

Golden West opened the first set with three-straight points before jumping out to a 12-3 lead. From there, the Rustlers continued to pull away including a 12-0 run to close out the set and win by a score of 25-6.

The Dons played Golden West tough in the early stages of the second set. After the Rustlers scored the first two points, the Dons came back to tie the set at 2-2 on a Michelle Nguyen kill. SAC would continue to stay close with a Nguyen kill making it 5-3 in favor of Golden West before Trey Leauanae's kill cut the Rustlers lead to 6-4.

Esther Arroyo would add a kill later to make the Golden West lead 10-6 but the Rustlers would start to pull away from there. After another Nguyen kill made the score 16-10 in favor of the visiting team, the Rustlers closed the set out on a 9-4 run to win 25-14.

The third game saw the Dons establish their first leads of the match with Alejandrina Alejandro's service ace putting the Dons up 2-1 before a kill by Nguyen put the Dons up 3-2. The Rustlers would then break a 4-4 tie and reclaim the lead for good.

However, the Dons wouldn't go down without a fight as they cut a Golden West lead from 10-5 to 10-8 to keep the match close. But Golden West would respond again as they pulled out to a 20-12 lead before ultimately winning the set, and the match, by a final score of 25-16.