Debora Araujo and Ariel Austin combined for 26 kills and the Western Nebraska Community College Cougars swept past Eastern Wyoming College Tuesday night at Cougar Palace for their 28th win of the season. Araujo finished with 14 kills and 10 digs, and Austin hammered down 12 kills in giving the No. 5 Cougars the 25-18, 25-16, 25-10 victory.
“We were a little slow in the beginning and we didn’t seem to have a whole lot of energy, but after a couple of timeouts, we finally picked it up, played our game and dominated [in the third set]” Austin, the sophomore rightside hitter from Woodland Park, Colo., said.
As the match progressed the Cougars started playing better and better, both offensively and defensively. Early on, though, the Lancers were hanging with the Cougars, which was something that pleased EWC coach Verl Petsch.
“I was pleased with how we came
out and took as much charge as we could,” he said. “That is what we do all year; we play up and down too much. When you have those downs, you give up too many points and it is tough to rally to come back.”
The big thing in the match is both teams put together plenty of long rallies with some nice defense. Austin said that their defense was superb on the evening as six different players finished with six more digs. Kuulei Kabalis and Araujo paced the team with 10 digs each, followed by Emily Hoehn and Fernanda Goncalves with eight digs each.
“Our defense is what we have been wanting to work on and our digging went really well,” Austin said. “We still have to work on our blocks a little bit, but overall we did well on our defense.”
EWC took an early 3-0 lead behind the serving of freshman Austin Dailey and led 6-5 on a service point by Sammie Perkins. After that, the Cougars Kathryn Stock had a kill and then five straight point to vault WNCC to a 10-6 lead. Moments later, Goncalves had three points for a 15-9 lead and never looked back.
The second set was tight at the start with the Lancers staying within two points for much of the first set, the last time at 10-8. After that, Tania Torres rattled off four straight points behind two kills each from Araujo and Kathryn Stock for a 15-8 lead.
Scottsbluff’s Mackenzie Westphal then served three straight points to push the Cougar lead to 21-10, before the Lancers made a mini-run behind two service points from Dailey and a kill from Mariah Sawyer to slice the lead to 22-14. But, kills from Torres and the final kill from Westphal gave the Cougars the second set win.
The third set was all WNCC from start to finish as Torres served six straight points to push the Cougars in front 8-1. After EWC cut the lead to 11-4, Goncalves put together a five-point service run, including a powerful kill from Austin, and two kills from Araujo for a 20-6 lead. Scottsbluff’s Jodi Huddleston finished off the match with three service points, while Westphal had the final kill of the match.
WNCC had several players that stepped up. Araujo finished with 14 kills and 10 digs, while Torres had 14 points, five aces, four kills and two blocks. Also fro WNCC, Stock had six kills, seven digs and five points; Lais Soares ahd five kills; Westphal had three kills, six digs and four points; Goncalves had eight points, 37 set assists, and eight digs; Kabalis had 10 digs, two aces, and two points; Hoehn had eight digs; Sierra Schmidt had four digs and two points; and Huddleston had three points.
The Lancers were led by Perkins with 11 kills, Welsh with 13 set assists, Dailey with 10 points and Dakota Clough with 16 digs.
The Lancers, 14-16, will next be in action Thursday when they host Casper College in a sub-regional and Wyoming Conference contest. The Cougars, 28-3, will take to the road Thursday through Saturday as they head out on their southern Colorado sub-region swing of matches with Otero, Lamar and Trinidad State.
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