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By Steve Carpenter
HCC Sports Information
Wednesday, September 12, 2007
Sophomore All-American Ludmila Amaral stepped
up big for the No. 12 Hutchinson Community College volleyball team with
three kills, one stuff block and one ace in the fifth game as the Lady
Dragons pulled out a 3-2 Jayhawk West victory over Garden City on Wednesday
night in the 2007 home opener at the Sports Arena.
Amaral tied a career high with 19 kills in
Hutchinson’s 30-20, 30-24, 22-30, 26-30, 15-11 victory over Garden City.
Amaral hit a .500 and added a solid floor game with 10 digs, six solo blocks
and four ace serves. It was her fifth double-double of the season.
The victory extends the Lady Dragons winning
streak in Jayhawk Conference Western Division matches to 26 and their
winning streak against Jayhawk West teams to 48 matches.
HCC (10-6, 2-0 Jayhawk West. 1-0 Region)
looked to be in control of the match after winning Games 1 and 2 by
comfortable margins. But Games 3 and 4 were a different story as the
Broncbusters (9-6, 1-1, 0-1) stepped up their play with the three-pronged
attack of Jovana Radojevic, Rachel Mrdeza and Shawna Ruiz, who combined for
44 kills, 28 coming in Games 3 and 4.
The Lady Dragons also had numerous passing
breakdowns as well as blocking problems and that all resulted in HCC hitting
only .042 in Game 3 and .159 in Game 4.
“I don’t know if we expected Garden City not
to come out and play tough in the third or what, HCC head coach Ronda
Shirley said. “We aren’t playing consistent. We start hard and we finish
hard, but we aren’t very good in the middle of the game.”
The Lady Dragons responded in Game 5, opening
with an 8-2 run. Amaral was the catalyst in the decisive fifth game with a
key kill and block to give Hutch an 8-2 lead. Garden City pulled to within
12-9, but Amaral countered that run with a kill and ace serve for a 14-9
lead.
“We started a little bit slow (in games 3 and
4) and then we didn’t make good passes or good blocks,” said Amaral, HCC’s
reigning Jayhawk West Freshman of the Year. “In the last (game) we came out
hard from the first point to the last point.”
For the match the Lady Dragons hit .179 on 57
kills. HCC also outblocked Garden City 16-9.
Sophomore Sarah Unruh had 12 kills and hit a
.193. Freshman LaToya Taylor had nine kills, hitting a .250 with six total
blocks. Sophomore Nikki Canon had seven kills, hitting a .166, with four
digs and three total blocks.
Sophomore libero KeAnne Langford had a
career-high 22 digs to lead HCC defensively. Sister Karalee Langford had 17
set assists, 11 digs and two aces. Freshman Melissa Gmur had 14 assists, 12
digs and two aces.
Radojevic had a team-high 18 kills to lead
Garden City. Mrdeza had 16 kills and Ruiz added 12 kills.
“Garden’s a much-improved team,” Shirley
said. “You have to give them credit. Their setter is very good and smart.
When they were beating us, they were passing better than us. Passing usually
tells the story of a game.”
With Game 1 tied at 8-all, the Lady Dragons
slowly, but surely started to take charge. HCC hit .333 on 14 kills in the
opener as a kill and consecutive service aces by Amaral started a 13-6 run
that was capped off by a Unruh kill for a 21-14 lead. Garden City got as
close as six points at 24-18, but HCC scored six of the final eight points,
including the final four points with game point coming on a Karalee Lanford
ace serve.
Garden City jumped out to a 5-1 lead in Game
2 before the Lady Dragons quickly rebounded and tied the game at 6-all. From
that point, there were four ties. At 13-all, Taylor stuffed a Buster attack
and the Lady Dragons never trailed again the Game 2. An Amaral kill closed
out the game and gave Hutch a 2-0 lead.
HCC never got in sync in Game 3, posting one
of its worst single-game hitting percentages of the season (.042). Mrdeza
had seven kills and Rajojevic added five kills and one block to lead Garden
City to an easy Game 3 win. The Busters closed the game on a 10-5 run.
Garden City jumped out to a 9-4 lead in Game
4 and HCC never was able to close the gap. An Amanda Smith ace cut the
Buster lead to 9-6. On three other occasions the Lady Dragons had the
deficit at three, but weren’t able to climb any closer. At 28-25, Mrdeza
blasted a cross-court kill to give the Busters game point, which they closed
out two rotations later.
The Lady Dragons travel to the Missouri
State-West Plains Tournament this weekend in West Plains, Mo., and will play
host to Butler in another Jayhawk Conference match at 6:30 p.m. on Monday at
the Sports Arena.
Match notes
– Since the advent of rally scoring in 2001, this was the first time that
the Lady Dragons have played a five-game match at the Sports Arena. … HCC is
now 7-5 in five-game matches since 2001. … Freshman Amanda Stucky played
only two points in the match. On the second of those points, she took the
service reception and then put down the match-ending kill, her first kill as
a Lady Dragon. … Earlier in the day, the Lady Dragons moved up two spots to
12th in the NJCAA Division I volleyball poll.
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<HCC-GARDEN CITY
PHOTO GALLERY>
OTHER QUOTES
Head coach Ronda Shirley
On her team’s inconsistent play …
“We aren’t playing the middle as strong.
That’s consistency. I think this was a good lesson for them. I think they
are getting tired of digging a whole for themselves.”
On switching to a 5-1 offense in the third
game …
“I went to a 5-1 in the third with Karalee
and had her start serving, so it was a totally different atmosphere. I feel
confidence enough in my players that I should be able to mix it around and
adjust. Maybe it was a bad call on my part, but if we ever get into a
situation where we need to change it up, we need to be prepared and I want
them to be ready.”
On coming back to win the fifth game …
“We fought back. I think teams in the past
would have fell apart and died in the fifth game. I was proud that they had
some fire in them and they really wanted to come back, but it’s
disappointing that they put themselves in that situation to begin with.”
Sophomore Karalee Langford
On what happened in Games 3 and 4 …
“We couldn’t get our blocks closed and our
floor defense wasn’t digging well enough to get any sets or hits. It started
bad and ended bad. Nothing at all was going well.”
On what Coach Shirley said before the
fifth game …
“She said that she trusted us and believed in
us and we had to trust and believe in ourselves to win.” |
