CHEYENNE, WY – The #17 Laramie County Community College volleyball team rolled to their 12th win in a row over Northwest College on Friday night at Storey Gym, taking it in straight sets 25-15, 25-20, 25-16 and moved to one match away from completing a perfect home season while they were at it.
"That is one of our goals, to not let anyone defeat us at home," Head Coach Zach Shaver said. "I think it will be something we talk about a little tomorrow morning and maybe a little during the match. It's always good to have a different goal from kills, aces, serves, points, something that we can hang our hat on
Set one started out with LCCC jumping out quickly to a 5-1 advantage and forcing the Trappers to take an early timeout to settle down the momentum.
The attempt didn't work as planned and the Golden Eagles continued to push forward and went on a 5-0 run to take a dominant 18-5 lead on the way to a 25-15 win in the opening set.
"We had a lot of energy built up in the locker room built up and came out and just exerted that on the court, so it was kind of fun," Stauffenberg said, adding that the team plays best when they are enjoying what they do.
The break in between sets was needed for Trappers and they took advantage of it to settle down their attack and it led to a much more back and forth start to the set. Tied at six, the Golden Eagles made a move to pull ahead on a Kate Ohlsen service run to double up NWC 12-6.
The match didn't turn into a runaway though and Northwest fought back to get within three at 18-15 on a 5-0 run of their own. They would stay that close to the end but could never work past the LCCC block with was working well and LCCC finished off the set 25-20 to go up 2-0.
"We just weren't working hard enough and weren't moving our feet without the ball very well," Shaver said. "We were taking it for granted they were going to keep making the mistakes they made in the first set and we weren't contacting the ball as well as we should to make our teammates lives easier."
LCCC didn't wait around in the third set to see if Northwest would stay in their own rhythm and took control early. An 8-0 run for LCCC pushed the lead to double digits at 14-4, and more impressively, the run was triggered by the Golden Eagles winning six of the eight points on their own attacks or blocks.
From there, it became a game of mathematics, and LCCC had been studying, going up as much as 21-9, going deep into their bench on the way to a 25-16 win to close out the match. The Golden Eagles got most of their hitters involved including bench players and Stauffenberg said that is when the team plays its best.
"Spreading out the ball is huge for us. It pulls blockers on the other side and opens things up for other hitters," she said.
The team was led on the night by Stauffenberg with a double-double, tallying 11 kills and 12 digs. Elysiana Fonseca finished a perfect night hitting the ball with seven kills and zero errors and was a wall at the net with six block assists.
Famke Zomer added nine kills and McArthur finished with six kills.
Ohlsen only played the first two sets and finished with 26 assists before giving way to Nicole Shaver and Cassandra Yurcak who both added five each in the final frame.
Defensively, the Golden Eagles finished with seven total blocks, all assisted, and had 54 digs with Sadie Christiansen leading the way with 15.
Shaver said the blocking was something that really makes the match easier on defense for the team as a whole.
"Blocking is a momentum builder when you score a point off of a block and it's just a little bit of an intimidation factor," he said. "And it just makes our life easier because we don't have to transition for a point which is one of the hardest parts of volleyball, so I was definitely proud of how we made some adjustments and got our blockers in front of their hitters."
LCCC will return to action on Saturday afternoon for sophomore day against Central Wyoming College as they look to complete the perfect home slate against a team that took them to five sets in Riverton three weeks back.
Stauffenberg, who is from Lander, Wyoming just outside of Riverton, said getting the win against the Rustlers with all of the other details added in would be special.
"It just makes it more exciting for me," she said. "I'm excited to come out and play my best and just rely on my teammates and I feel very confident about tomorrow."
Tickets for the match are available at www.golccc.com as well as streaming information.