WICHITA FALLS, Texas— The nation's 22
nd-ranked Colorado Mesa University Maverick volleyball team completed a perfect 3-0 weekend as they claimed a pair of 3-1 neutral-court victories over Arkansas Tech University and Eastern New Mexico University on Saturday at the Midwestern State University Hampton Inn-vitational.
CMU, now 5-2 overall on the young season, had downed the host Mustangs on Friday and claimed the unofficial tournament victory as the only unbeaten team heading into the start of Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference play on Thursday night at home in Brownson Arena against currently No. 20 MSU Denver.
The Mavericks dropped the first set of each Saturday match by identical 25-23 scores but rallied to win the second, third and fourth sets of both matches.
Against Arkansas Tech, four different Mavericks had 12 or more kills in a balanced 23-25, 25-21, 25-22, 25-16 victory.
Tye Wedhorn and freshman
Sydney Leffler led that group with 14 kills each. Wedhorn hit an errorless .467 on 30 swings and added a season-high six blocks from her middle blocker spot. Leffler hit at a respectable .263 clip on the outside.
Savannah Spitzer and
Holly Schmidt also had 12 kills each. Spitzer hit .429 while Schmidt added 15 digs to record her first double-double of the season.
Setter
Sabrina VanDeList also had a double-double with 40 assists and 10 digs.
Libero
Kerstin Layman had a season and match-high 21 digs to lead the Maverick back-row, which helped hold the Golden Suns to a .157 hitting effort. The Mavs hit nearly 100 points higher at .256 as
Maranda Theleus added eight kills and four blocks from the right side.
Ara Norwood also had nine assists and eight digs in the victory.
The Golden Suns, who later fell in a 5-set match against the host Mustangs to fall to 3-3, were led by 11 kills from Abby Simpson.
After splitting the first two sets, the Mavericks seized control of the match in the third with a 3-0 run that featured two Wedhorn kills to break what was a 20-20 deadlock en-route to the 25-22 set win, finished off by a Schmidt kill.
The Mavs then used a 6-0 run in the fourth frame with Schmidt behind the service line to take a 11-5 lead while never looking back building as large as a 19-9 lead.
In the 23-25, 25-17, 25-22, 25-20 victory over the still winless ENMU Greyhounds (0-7), Leffler recorded a career-high 17 kills while hitting .375. Wedhorn had another 14-kill performance while Spitzer and Theleus put down eight kills each.
VanDeList added a career-high 42 assists while Layman registered 13 digs.
The Mavs outhit the Greyhounds, .244-.217 throughout the match.
CMU also recorded nine service aces from six different servers.
The Mavs used a 5-0 spurt early in the third frame to build a 9-5 lead and held that lead throughout the rest of the set although the Greyhounds did pull within two on multiple occasions, including at 24-22. However, the Mavs took the set on a service error.
They then went on to take the decisive fourth set, breaking open what was a 17-16 set with an extended 7-3 spurt.
Jasmine Gannon had 16 kills and 13 digs to lead the Greyhounds.
