Thursday night, the women’s volleyball team played a one-sided game against their non-conference opponents, the Columbia Bible College Bearcats, sweeping them in three sets, and improving over their 3-1 victory against them last year.
Although the Clan opened up scoring, the first set started off close, as at the first time-out the score was only 10-7 SFU; it looked as though the game truly could go either way.
After that, however, the Clan kicked into gear, winning the first set comfortably 25-17, with 14 kills.
The second set wasn’t any closer, with SFU getting out to a quick 12-5 lead. At one point they had a 13 point lead, before the Bearcats attempted to rally back before losing the set by 11. Kelley Robinson had a critical dig to secure the 24th point of the set.
In the third and ultimately final set, the Bearcats opened the scoring. It was a tight beginning, but as in the first set, the Clan pulled away and, after a while, it became apparent that the Clan’s skills were too much for the Bearcats to handle.
The Bearcats fought back hard, resulting in an incredible back and forth rally near the end of the game, but ultimately, the back and forth ended with the 22nd point for the Clan. They took the set 25-17, completing the sweep.
Statistically, the Clan were lead by Devon May and Brooklynn Gould-Bradbury. May was the focal point of their attack, with 12 kills and many chances to add to that total, while Gould-Bradbury provided the perfect set-up throughout the night, with 30 of the team’s 41 assists.
Despite her team’s relative ease in handling the Columbia Bible College Bearcats, May still sees room for improvement.
“There’s always a thousand things to improve on,” she said, after the game. “We’ll look at the stats from our coach and she’ll tell us what our passing percentage and hitting percentage was, but I think mainly it’s limiting errors when it’s still early in the season. It’s easy to make those mistakes but I think that [change] will come later in the season.”
In all, it was a good start for the Clan. Fans will most certainly hope that this is a preview of what they will see night in and night out against their GNAC rivals.
