IOLA, Kan. – With NJCAA Region VI playoff seeding starting to take shape, the Cloud County Community College volleyball team would take a big step forward on Thursday night by defeating Allen County Community College in four sets on the road in Iola, Kansas on March 25th.
Earning their sixth win in their last seven matches, Cloud County improves to 13-8 overall and 11-8 in the Kansas Jayhawk Community College Conference. Allen falls to 9-10 overall and 7-10 in the KJCCC with three matches remaining in the next six days to conclude their regular-season schedule.
A strong opening set from the T-Birds would see CCCC jump out to an early 4-2 lead before seeing the Red Devils tie things back up at 6-6 early on. Three-straight points by Allen would allow ACC to grab a 9-7 lead, but a service error and attack error from the Red Devils would tie things back up for Cloud County at 9-9. After seeing the teams trade off the next four points of the set, CCCC would go on a 5-1 run to claim a 14-11 lead. The three-point advantage would hold all the way through to the 18-15 mark as Allen would use their first timeout of the match before pulling back within a point at 18-17 on back-to-back kills. From that point forward, Cloud County would four of the next five to go up 22-18 before an Allen kill would slow down momentum momentarily as the T-Birds would get three straight errors from the Red Devils to end the set and take a 25-19 win.
Allen County would control things for much of the second set as Cloud County would trail early on by as many as four at 10-6 with the Red Devils taking advantage of a pair of CCCC attack errors. ACC would manage to maintain their lead until a 4-1 spurt from the T-Birds would tie things at 15-15 before taking their first lead of the set on the next point. Not to be outdone, the Red Devils would manage to battle and reclaim the lead at 23-21 before getting things to set point on the next rally. Cloud County would fend off each of the next three set points however to send things to extra points as neither team would be able to string together enough points to finish off the set. Things would eventually come to an end as a 28-28 tie would make way for a pair of Allen County kills and service ace to end the set on a 3-1 rally to give the Red Devils a 31-29 set win.
With the match tied at 1-1, Cloud County would trail ACC early in the third set before getting a
Lakyn Tenbrink ill that would spark a 5-1 run to force an Allen timeout at 10-6. The run would continue out of the timeout as the T-Bird lead would grow to nine at 17-8 to force the Red Devils to call their final timeout of the set as CCCC would take their largest lead of the match. At 20-9. Allen County would put up a fight to try and rally late, but Cloud County would have enough offense to take a 25-15 third set win to go up 2-1.
Things would get off to a similar start in the fourth set as the T-Birds would break the scoring open early to grab a 6-2 lead that Cloud County would maintain over the next several rallies. After using a timeout early in the set at 4-1, Allen would burn their final timeout trailing 15-10 as momentum would once again start to swing in favor of CCCC as the Red Devils would need to come up with a rally to stay alive in the match. The five-point T-Bird lead would be dwindled down to just two at 21-19 before seeing a kill and block from ACC tie things up at 21-21. Cloud County would then face a 23-22 deficit as well as a 24-23 deficit as CCCC would be forced to fend off set point in another set. Offensive power from
Lizzy Pfortmiller and
Geraldyn Palacios would take over in crunch time as the duo would each record a kill sandwiched around an Allen attack error as CCCC would score the final three points of the match to win 26-24 and complete their second four-set win of the year over the Red Devils.
A big night from
Delaney Herold would see the sophomore record a team-best 14 kills while also adding 29 digs on the night while Pfortmiller would have five of her 12 kills come in the fourth set.
Linnea Mowry would join Herold to tie for the team lead in digs with 29, and setter
Jaycee Burghart would have all 53 set assists on the night to go along with five kills.
What's Next?
Cloud County will play their regular-season finale on Monday, March 29th with a 2 p.m. road contest at Coffeyville Community College. The matchup will see Cloud County go for their fourth season sweep this season as the T-Birds defeated the Red Ravens in straight sets back on March 15th in Concordia.
