WNCC goes 4-0 at Pizza Hut Classic

Western Nebraska Community College’s Soriana Pacheco put on a serving clinic Saturday at the Pizza Hut Invite in Sterling, Colo.

The 5-foot-10 sophomore setter popped in 29 points and 10 aces in the Cougars two wins over Colby Community College and Garden City Community College to finish the tournament as the only unbeaten team.

“She had incredible matches to today. You can’t say enough about her. She runs our offense, is a second-year player and makes our team go,” WNCC coach Chris Green said. “She is an incredible player. She really played well. She was all over the place making great digs. She has that nice jump serve with a lot of aces. And when she doesn’t serve an ace, many times the pass doesn’t go to their setter so we get a free ball. She really means a lot of points for us. Her setting is incredible, but there is a lot of other parts of her game that is also good.”

Pacheco helped lead the Cougar women to two more wins on the season in impressive style. After opening the tournament Friday with straight-game wins over Seward County Community College and Casper on Friday, WNCC won both matches Saturday in straight games. The Cougars defeated Colby 30-22, 30-20, 30-5 and walked through Garden City 30-22, 30-14, 30-7 to improve to 24-1 on the season.

“Against Garden City we played pretty well throughout the match. We had very few serving errors and 18 aces,” Green said. “We served incredibly well and our passing was OK to run our offense. I think we had a pretty good match to finish the tournament.”

Pacheco, though, wasn’t the only player to stand out on the day. Many players put up eye-popping numbers, which Green said is a testament of how hard they had to fight to win points.

“The stats show that the matches weren’t that easy,” Green said. “There were some long rallies and we had to work hard to get a win. It is good to play teams like this where we have to work hard to get those points. “

Pacheco finished with a triple-double against Garden City. She finished with 14 digs, 19 points, 34 set assists, eight aces and five kills. Nayka Benitez also stepped up finishing with 17 digs, three aces and six points.

Also for the Cougars, Jennifer Eichler had 12 kills and five blocks; Kendra Schauermann had seven digs, and eight points; Fatima Balza had four digs, three kills, four blocks and six points; Daphine da Silva had four digs, three kills, five points and two aces; Stacie Meisner had four aces and 12 points; Chelsea Lyles with seven kills; and Aida Bauza with 14 kills.

In fact, the way the team played against Garden City made Green extremely pleased. After fighting to a 30-22 win in the first game, the Cougars took control early in the second game as Pacheco served up five straight points. Da Silva pushed the lead to 17-4 with four points and two aces and the Cougars never looked back.

In fact, WNCC made quick work of Garden City in the third game, going through just eight rotations in collecting the win. Pacheco started things with four points an dthen Meisner pitched in six points for a 14-3 lead.

WNCC pushed the lead to 25-6 on five Pacheco serves before Schauermannn finiwshed of the Broncbusters with four service points.

The Cougars were just as impressive in the Colby match, where Benitez finished with a double-double recording 12 digs and 14 points. She also collected eight aces. Eichler also had another good match finishing with 12 kills and six points, followed by Pacheco with six kills, 10 points and 27 set assists; da Silva with six points and five digs; Pacheco with 27 set assists, six kills and 10 points; Bauza with eight kills; Meisner with eight kills and five points; Schauermann with six points and eight digs; and Balza with four kills and five blocks.

Green said his team needed that depth against a good Colby squad.

“Colby played very well against us and that happens a lot. When you are ranked high, teams come out and play well. Colby gave us their best shot in the first two games and then I think they ran out of gas,” he said. “They played very well against us. We had some serving and pass errors in the first two games. We didn’t run our offense liked we wanted to and we struggled a little bit in those two games. In the third game we served extremely well and had a lot of aces and we passed a little better, too. We kind of took Colby out of the game and they made their errors that they weren’t making in the first two games.”

WNCC will return to action next week when they host the Wyo-Braska Shootout Thursday-Saturday. Green said they will be pushed again.

“We will see some of these same teams again. We will play Seward and Casper this next weekend in our home tournament,” he said. “There will be some really good teams here. We will have our work cut out for us. There are some good teams coming in. They will force us to work hard and hopefully we will continue to get better.”