The Western Nebraska Community College volleyball team captured their 29th win of the season with a four-game win over Trinidad State Junior College Saturday afternoon at Cougar Palace in a Region IX South contest.
The Cougars, in gaining the 25-16, 25-15, 26-28, 25-4 win, earned their eighth straight win. More importantly, the Cougars moved to 8-1 in Region IX South with one conference match to play next Wednesday at home against Northeastern Junior College in PAWzitivily Pink day for breast cancer awareness.
Kaylee Spreier, who had 10 big kills in the match from her middle hitter position, said they played alright minus the third game.
"Honestly we didn't do that bad," Spreier said. "We tried in the third set mixing up the lineup and it really wasn't working. But other than that we played pretty good as a team.
The Cougars third game hiccup was one that Trinidad State gained momentum late and kept it. The fourth game Spreier said they showed how a second-ranked team should play, winning in dominating fashion 25-4.
"That fourth set we were like we should have not lost that third set," Spreier said. "We just said that we will show them we deserve to be number two and that is what we did."
WNCC had four players register with double-figure kills in the match and four players with double-figure digs.
Brooke Kaawa, Lara Picht and Barbara Briceno each had double-doubles in those categories. Kaawa had 14 kills and 10 digs, Briceno tallied 15 kills and 16 digs, and Picht had 12 kills and 15 digs.
Briceno and Kaawa actually had triple-doubles in the match. Kaawa added 15 points with two aces, while Briceno had 14 points with an ace.
Spreier also had a good match, tallying 10 kills along with nine points, two aces, and three digs.
Spreier, the Gering graduate, said a lot of people got big kills when they needed them in the win.
"As a team we are getting better at that [everyone contributing]. Everyone is contributing to the points instead of it just one person having a million kills. Everyone is contributing a lot to the points and that really helps our offense out."
The Cougars played well the first two games. In the first, WNCC held an 8-1 lead before Alicia Hall had three points to cut the lead to 8-5. WNCC pushed the lead to 15-8 before three more points from Trinidad's Priscilla Sanchez sliced the lead to 15-12. After that, it was all WNCC as Kaawa had six points including two aces before WNCC won 25-16.
The second game was close for a while until WNCC used strong serving from Spreier and Briceno to push the lead to 13-5. Trinidad cut the lead to 18-13, but it was short lived as Briceno served two points and Kaawa served the final three points for the win.
The third game saw Trinidad lead early 6-1 and later 11-9 before WNCC came back to lead 22-19 and then 23-20 on a Spreier kill. WNCC had match point at 24-21 when things went astray after Hall served three points to put Trinidad up 25-24 before winning 28-26.
The fourth game was all WNCC as Spreier had four early points for a 7-1 lead followed by four points from Alwaise Villa for a 13-2 lead. Briceno added to the runaway score with five points and Kaawa finished off the match with six straight points.
Bia Berti finished with a double-double of 33 set assists and 10 digs. Berti also had two kills, a solo block, and three points. Danika Daum tallied 14 set assists with two digs.
Also for the Cougars, Lauren Shaul had four points and three digs; Villa had five points, three aces, and three digs; Joise Maldonado had five digs and a kill; Kadara Marshall had two digs; and Genesis Benitez had three digs.
WNCC closes out the regular season next week with three home matches. After Wednesday's NJC Region IX South match, the Cougars will host the WNCC Classic on Friday and Saturday. WNCC will play Larado Community College on Friday at 7 p.m. and then Iowa Western Community College on Saturday at 1 p.m.
Spreier said they just have to play like they know how to finish out the regular season on a positive note.
"We have to play like we know we can," she said. "We can't play down to other team's levels. We have to play the way we know we can play. If we do that we should win."