Top-ranked Lady Tigers open the season with a pair of straight-set wins
Opening defense of its back-to-back national championships, the top-ranked Cowley College volleyball team picked up a pair of wins on Thursday inside W.S. Scott Auditorium. The Lady Tigers began with a 25-5, 25-18, 25-10 win over the Southwestern College JV before defeating Pratt 26-24, 25-11, 25-15.
'We had some freshmen show some great improvement and balanced the attack very well," Cowley head coach Steven Gream said. "The pieces are there, we have just got to fine-tune it."
Cowley, winners of 83 matches in a row, came out on fire against Southwestern, scoring the first six points and racing out to a commanding 18-2 lead in the 25-5 win.
Set two would be much closer with the score tied at 10-10 before the Lady Tigers were able to use a 10-3 run to pull away in the 25-18 win.
The serving of sophomore Ashlynn Jackard spurred Cowley to the win in set three as she served 14 straight points in the 25-10 win.
Jackard and freshman Brooklyn Wuest led a balanced Tiger attack with six kills apiece. Freshmen Lana Gomilanovic (five kills) and Teo Cekan (four kills) each hit over .500 in the victory.
Cowley would then turn their attention to Pratt, which would be a step up in competition.
The Lady Tigers led 16-10 in set one before the Beavers came back to tie the score at 17-17. The score would again be tied at 20-20 and 24-24 before Cowley scored the final two points to win 26-24.
"We relaxed a bit and let Pratt tie it up before winning, which was a great lesson to learn," Gream said. "When we play the big dogs, we will need that kind of resilience, but I told them, let's not put ourselves in that situation in the first place."
Feeding off the emotion of winning a tight first set, Cowley scored seven of the first eight points in set three and was never threatened in the 25-11 win of set two.
Pratt would score the first two points in set three before the Lady Tigers responded with a 16-4 run to lead 16-6. Pratt would close within 17-12, but that would be as close as they would get as Cowley went on to the 25-15 win to improve to 2-0 on the season.
Gomilanovic led Cowley with 11 kills, while Wuest added eight.
Jackard finished with an incredible 12 aces and 12 kills in the two matches.
"Ashlynn has stepped up and is leading the middle hitters," Gream said.
Cowley will remain home to face the Kansas Wesleyan University JV on Wednesday, August 27, at 6:30 p.m. The Lady Tigers are 194-14 at home since 2009.
"We need to clean up a few things and are hoping to have (sophomore) Josci Buckley back by then to add some experience and leadership to the team," Gream said.