CHEYENNE, WY – The #18 Laramie County Community College dropped their opening set to the Eastern Wyoming College Lancers on Tuesday night but rallied to take the next three and extend their winning streak to eight matches while moving to 7-0 in conference play.
"We trusted our system and started executing a little better," Head Coach Zach Shaver said of the come-from-behind win. "I think we took it for granted that we were going to walk in the gym and play well and we worked to get back to playing better volleyball."
The Lancers opened with the early lead in set one, building it to 6-3 until a service run from Sidney Kettelkamp evened the match at six all and gave it a fresh start. EWC forced a timeout when back-to-back service aces moved the lead back to three at 9-6 in a back-and-forth opening set.
After a 7-4 Lancer run out of the time out, the Golden Eagles were forced to call their second time out down 16-10 and were able to chip into the deficit out of the break, aided by the defense of Sadie Christiansen which spoiled several EWC attacks. LCCC was able to trim the gap to 19-16 by setting the middle more and getting Elysiana Fonseca involved in the attack.
The Lancers called a timeout of their own and began spreading the ball to the edges of the court to extend the Golden Eagle defense and their lead to 22-17 but it was the back row again stepping up for LCCC to keep several rallies alive to trip it to 22-20 on another Fonseca kill. Unfortunately, the momentum wouldn't carry over and the Lancers took three of the next four points to take the opening set 25-21.
"They were a team that kept the ball in play and didn't make errors," Shaver said. "Luckily our defense picked up after set one."
Set two started off the opposite way for LCCC with a 6-4 lead in the opening ten rallies. The Lancers weren't one to go away lightly and got one of their top rotations to the net to go on a 4-0 run to get their first lead of the set at 11-9.
Demi Stauffenberg ended the rally with a kill and an ace from Addyson McArthur brought the match to an eleven all tie and again on a McArthur kill at 17 all but neither time were able to capture the lead, eventually calling their first time out down 19-17.
The Lancers made a back-to-back ball handling errors amid a 4-0 run for LCCC to put the Golden Eagles up 21-19 and were able to keep the Lancers off balance the rest of the way to take the set 25-22 and even the match at one set apiece.
After falling behind 3-2 in the third set, Christiansen led a 5-0 run for the Golden Eagles on her serve to force a Lancer timeout at 7-3.
EWC picked up the point out of the timeout, but LCCC was back on another run one serves later with Emily Bugas leading a rally of three straight points to give the Golden Eagles a commanding six-point lead.
The route was on after that and LCCC picked up a double-digit lead at 17-7 after an Ana Haubner kill and even through a timeout, Nicole Shaver was able to keep a service run going for another five straight LCCC points on the way to a 25-13 win for a 2-1 match lead.
"I think she brought some confidence and leadership to the court that we needed," Coach Shaver added about Nicole, who stepped in as the lead setter for the final two sets of the match.
The Lancers opened the fourth set with the opening break to take an 8-4 lead as Shaver was forced to take his first timeout early in the set to settle down the Golden Eagles and LCCC picked up the next five points to go up 9-8.
The middle of the set saw six ties and four lead changes before a Christiansen led service run pushed the Golden Eagles in front 17-14. That was followed by a 6-3 run from EWC to tie the match at 20 all and another LCCC timeout was the result.
McArthur put some emphasis on a 3-0 run out of the time out with a big kill and the final EWC timeout was taken with LCCC before the two sides traded points on the way to a 25-22 set win to give the match to the Golden Eagles 3-1.
The team saw three players hit double digits, led by Fonseca and McArthur's 13 each. Stauffenberg added 11 more.
"We definitely needed it," Shaver said. "At times we were making too many hitting errors. They got the kills we needed, but we to cut our errors down."
Nicole Shaver led the team in assists for the first time in the season with 21 while Kate Ohlsen added 15.
The team finished with a season high 82 digs in the match and had highs from McArthur (19) and Stuaffenberg (17) to give both double doubles in the match.
The win improves the Golden Eagles to 23-4 on the year with three matches this weekend. They will host a tri-match with Trinidad State College and North Platte Community College on Friday beginning at 3:00 pm before hosting their Spike Out Polio match on Saturday against Gillette College at 2:00 pm.
More information can be found on those matches at www.golccc.com.