Ladt Saints Volleyball Make It 5 In A Row

The Seward County Lady Saints stayed hot Saturday afternoon at Bryant Gymnasium in Concordia, downing 2nd place Cloud County in straight sets on their home floor to earn their fifth straight win to wrap up the first half of Jayhawk West Conference play.

The flow of the game early in the first set was slow to get going as both teams worked through with they thought were some questionable calls on the whistle. After a Cloud service error, the Lady Saints began to push, getting back to back aces from Megan Sharratt to give them their first sizeable lead of the set at 9-5. A pair of kills from Alex Wood, playing close to home in Concordia, kept the Lady Saints up by four at 14-10 and Seward went up by five later on on a solo block from Angelina Minor to make it 17-12. Just when it looked like the Lady Saints might have taken the wind out of the T-Birds sails, a service error gave Cloud the ball back and three straight Lady Saint hitting errors allowed the T-Birds to come all the way back and tie the score at 17. The score remained tied at 20 as the home stretch hit when the Lady Saints stepped on the gas for one last burst in the set. A kill and then an ace from Carolina Gasparini made it 22-20 and then kills from Wood and Carolina Freitas gave the Lady Saints four cracks at set point. They wouldn’t close it right away, but on their second chance they did and Seward took the first set 25-21 to go ahead 1-0.

The Lady Saints came out firing in the second set and jumped all over the T-Birds early 6-0. Seward didn’t stop there, continuing to pack on the points until they took their largest lead of the match at 18-9 on a Cloud County attack error. As they did in the first set, Seward let up with the victory in their palms and Cloud took advantage, quickly closing the Lady Saints lead to 20-17 after an 8-2 run. A Seward service error allowed the T-Birds to within two and that is where the score remained to 23-21 after a ball handling error by the Lady Saints. The whistle was blown on the T-Birds for a ball handing error on the next play to make it 24-21 Seward and two points later Freitas would finish Cloud off with a kill in the middle to give the Lady Saints the set 25-22 in a wire to wire win.

Seward got off to another good start in the third set as they looked for the sweep of the T-Birds, getting four kills and a block in the first six points to grab a quick 5-1 advantage. They continued to extend their lead and after an ace from Thayna Silva and a block from Silva and Gasparini, the Lady Saints were out to a 12-3 advantage. Seward had their biggest lead of the day at 16-6 when five straight Lady Saint errors allowed Cloud to grab the momentum as they crawled back to within five at 16-11. The T-Birds continued to creep closer and before Seward knew it, it was just a two point contest at 17-15. Instead of calling a timeout to talk it over, Coach Bert Luallen decided to let his Lady Saints figure it out on their own, which they did, getting kills from Wood, Silva, and Freitas on the next three points to go up 20-15 and a solo block from Silva to take a 21-15 lead. The Lady Saints and T-Birds traded points from there, but with the six point lead, it was enough for Seward who got a kill from Sharratt to finish Cloud off and give the Lady Saints a 25-19 win to sweep the match.

For the second straight match, the Lady Saints final stat sheet was extremely balanced. No Lady Saint had double digit kills in the win, but four had 6 or more, led by Silva with 9 and Sharratt and Wood with 7. Sharratt filled the stat sheet up for Seward in the victory, registering a team high 4 aces to go along with her 7 kills and the freshman also chalked up a team best 6 blocks for the Lady Saints. Seward finished with 10 blocks as a team on the afternoon, the second most recorded this season. One fact not on the stat sheet in Saturday’s win was that Seward went the entire match without ever trailing. The score was tied on three occasions in the match, but the Lady Saints were never behind against the T-Birds.

Seward wins their fifth straight to close the first half of conference play and improve to 17-11 overall and 5-3 in Jayhawk action. Cloud County falls to 12-6 overall and 4-4 in conference play.

Next up for the Lady Saints is a crucial week of action in the Greenhouse this week as they host the team that they are now tied with for 2nd place, Colby, on Monday at 6:30, followed by their second match of the season against a Barton team that is starting to find their stride on Wednesday, also at 6:30.