Volleyball team wins in 5
After falling unexpectedly in the first game to Weber State, 30-24, the Utah State volleyball team decided to start playing. But, it was an uphill battle the rest of the match for the Aggies to get their fifth win of the season.
Zuzana Cernianska led the Aggies and all players with a career-high 30 kills. She also tied her career-best aces in a match with five.
“[Zuzana] rocked the world,” senior Kindy Peterson said.
“Not only did she have a lot of kills,” Utah State Head Coach Burt Fuller said, “but her hitting percentage [was .391]. She was very efficient.”
During the first game the Wildcats came out and hit a blistering .528 for the win, something the Aggies weren’t expecting.
In game two, the Ags came out strong and quickly went up 5-2. However, just when they were getting comfortable, the Cats would close in. WSU brought the game to 21-23, but USU was able to hold on to its lead and squeeze out a win.
After game two, the team went to the locker room. In there, Fuller told the team, they had to “play hard, and be excited for each ball,” Cernianska said, “and we had get first 10 points in the game.”
What Fuller said stuck with the Ags, and during game three, they came out on fire.
“It was awesome,” Peterson said of game three. “We couldn’t do any wrong, we were just on fire. I don’t even know what it was. Everyone was clicking out there. It was the best feeling ever.
“We should do that more often, then we’d be really good.”
During game three, everything went right for the Ags. They hit a dominating .577 and kept WSU down to just .062 for the game.
Two service aces early in the game from Cernianska gave Utah State an early 11-2 lead. Two service aces from Dominique Aresenault put the Ags up 18-5. Two more aces from Cernianska gave the Aggies an even stronger lead, 25-9. The Ags won the game 30-13.
“In game three we were really efficient,” Fuller said. “We had only one hitting error.”
Game four looked like it was going to turn out much like game three. The Wildcats kept pace with the Aggies at the beginning, but a 6-2 run toward the end of the game put USU up 27-23 and looking for the match win.
However, the Wildcats weren’t ready to lose. An 8-2 desperation run at the end gave the Wildcats the win, 31-29.
“It was nice to get that easy cushion in game three,” Fuller said. “But they did nice job of coming back and hanging tough and not folding in game four.”
Cernianska said it was really disappointing to lose the fourth game. She said that her team relaxed after winning so easily in game three, something they shouldn’t have done.
“We didn’t play hard enough for the first game and fourth,” she said. “We should play every game hard like the third game.”
It came down to the fifth game, something the team hadn’t been expecting.
The final game got off to a slow start because of a yellow card given to Fuller. He was protesting the match because he felt that Weber was not rotating correctly through out the fourth game.
“We felt there were some descrepencies in their line-up,” he said. “[But] that’s not why we lost in game four. They beat us in that game. We didn’t make plays when we needed to.”
After the yellow card, Fuller allowed game five to continue.
“We knew we had to come out on fire so we could keep our energy on our side,” Peterson said. “If we come out dead then we’re gonna have to play catch-up and that’s not very fun.”
Utah State did come out on fire, jumping out to an early 8-3 lead and holding on.
“I think the first part of the fifth game was easier than the last part,” Fuller said. “It got pretty tight down there in the stretch and the points we got were huge.”
The Ags were able to win the game 15-10 for the match win.
The Aggies next face Cal State Fullerton on Friday in California.
-aedmunds@cc.usu.edu