Box Score CONCORDIA, Kan. – Coming off a five-set heartbreaking road loss last Thursday, the Cloud County Community College volleyball team would find their comfort zone inside the friendly confines of Arley Bryant Gymnasium to defeat visiting Fort Scott Community College in four sets on Monday, March 22nd.
Recording their eighth straight home win to close out the home portion of their 2021 spring schedule, the T-Birds improved to 12-8 overall land 10-8 in the Kansas Jayhawk Community College Conference. The free fall for Fort Scott continues as the Greyhounds have now lost five of their past six contests and four in a row to move to 10-9 overall and 9-8 in KJCCC play.
CCCC and Fort Scott would split the first eight points of the match as neither team would be able to string together points until back-to-back kills from
Delaney Herold and
Lizzy Pfortmiller would kick start a 7-1 Cloud County run to force a Greyhound timeout at 11-5. The momentum from the run would carry over through the timeout as the T-Birds would keep things rolling to score the next six points to turn the run into a 13-1 rally to force FSCC into their final timeout of the set while leading 17-5. With the 12-point advantage, Cloud County would not allow Fort Scott to get any closer than 10 points to close out the set as CCCC would take a 25-15 decision in the opener.
Things would remain tight early on throughout the second set as well as Cloud County would build two-point leads on three different occasions before seeing Fort Scott tie things back up. Tied at 5-5, Cloud County would use two straight Greyhound attack errors to go on a 4-0 run to take a 9-5 lead as Cloud County would maintain their lead throughout the next 20 points of the set. Holding their four-point lead at 19-15, CCCC would score the next two points to take their largest lead of the set as FSCC would be unable to close the gap down the stretch as the T-Birds would win 25-20 and go up 2-0 in the match.
With Cloud County looking to end things quickly and sweep the match, Fort Scott would have other plans as the Greyhounds would jump out to a 10-6 lead to start the third set. After kills from
Geraldyn Palacios and Herold, Fort Scott would use a timeout as CCCC would battle back to tie things up at 12-12. The match would be tied at 14-14 when Fort Scott would score two straight points to reclaim the lead at 16-14 as CCCC would tie things back up at 17-17 before taking their first lead of the set on a Palacios kill. Following a Greyhound timeout with CCCC leading 19-17, Fort Scott would end the set by scoring eight of the final 11 points with Cloud County unable to complete the match sweep.
The momentum from a third-set victory for Fort Scott would be short-lived however as the T-Birds would come out by scoring the first seven points of the fourth set while jumping out to a 9-1 lead before eventually forcing an FSCC timeout at 11-3. Cloud County would continue to build their lead to as many as 12 at 20-8 and again at 22-10, but the Greyhounds would make one final push to try and stay alive in the match. CCCC would get things to match point at 24-14, but seven straight FSCC points would bring Fort Scott back within three. An attack error however would allow the T-Birds to avoid having to play a deciding fifth set as Cloud County would hang on for a 25-21 victory to pick up their 12th win of the year.
As a team, Cloud County would finish the game with a .274 attack percentage while getting a team-best 18 kills from Palacios. Herold would add 13 kills while Pfortmiller would finish with a .455 attack percentage and record 11 kills on 22 attacks. Cloud County would get five service aces including a match-high three from
Kylie Fuller while
Jaycee Burghart would finish with 48 set assists. The McPherson, KS native would also record 11 digs as three different T-Birds would reach double-figures in digs (
Linnea Mowry – 18, Herold – 17).
What's Next?
Cloud County will conclude their second-to-last week of the regular season on Thursday, March 25th with a 6:30 p.m. road match down in Iola, Kansas to take on Allen Community College. Allen was 9-8 overall and 7-8 in the KJCCC ahead of a home match against Johnson County on Monday night as the Red Devils still have five matches remaining on their schedule. In the earlier matchup between CCCC and ACCC, Cloud County took a four-set victory in Concordia on February 18th.
