STERLING, CO – The Laramie County Community College volleyball team saw their season come to a close on Friday afternoon to the hands of Casper College. The Thunderbirds swept the Golden Eagles 25-22, 25-16, 25-8 in the first match of the day, ending the tournament with LCCC going 1-2.

Casper played great volleyball and had definitely improved since we played them about a month ago," Head Coach Zach Shaver said. "Hats off to them and good luck to them pushing ahead."

The opening set was just what everyone expected from a pair of teams that split in the regular season. LCCC and Casper traded leads until the Thunderbirds took at 16-15 lead that they wouldn't surrender for the rest of the set.

The Golden Eagles cut the lead to one at 19-18 and at 23-22 but a pair of well-timed timeouts by Casper kept LCCC from gaining momentum before falling 25-22.

Set two opened up with Casper rolling off a 7-1 run to force an LCCC timeout. It seemed like the Golden Eagles were able to settle down, pulling back within two points twice, but at 14-12, Casper rolled into another long run to finish the match 25-16 and put LCCC in a 2-0 hole.

The Golden Eagles were again put on their back heels in the third set. Casper pushed ahead 6-1 before a timeout from LCCC and the Golden Eagles had to take another one at 13-4. The Thunderbirds hit a set high lead at 16 when they built the advantage to 21-5 before trading points with LCCC for the rest of the final set to take it 25-8.

The Golden Eagles were paced by Addyson McArthur with nine kills followed by Famke Zomer with six to go with a pair of aces and three blocks.

"Famke is a competitor. She is going to push to the very last ball and point," Shaver said. "It was her determination and her competitive spirit that helped her play a great match and do a few more things than she usually does today."

Kate Ohlsen finished the match with 20 assists.

The Golden Eagles finish the season at 29-8 and put up a 10-2 record in conference play. All-Region and other awards will be announced for the team in the coming days, so keep an eye out on www.golccc.com for more information during the offseason.

"We are definitely proud of everything we have done," Shaver summarized. "We accomplished a lot of our goals this season, of course it hurts when you don't accomplish the big one at the end. I think in the future looking back at this we will definitely remember a lot of the good wins, and as a program we just have to work on the last two weeks of the season and how do we keep improving."

Shaver said beating Western Nebraska three times in a year for the first time was a huge highlight as well as being in the rankings six of the nine weeks.