After fourteen matches on the road to begin the season, the Barton Community College volleyball team enjoyed a home opener sweep Wednesday night in dispatching Colby Community College 25-16, 25-14, and 25-21.
Barton improves to 2-0 in conference play and 10-5 overall while Colby slips to 1-2 in league and 5-6 overall.
The Cougars head back to the road on Saturday for a 6:30 p.m. first serve at Dodge City Community College before another busy week featuring a pair of home matches beginning Monday versus No. 9 Seward County Community College and Wednesday against No. 19 Butler Community College to precede a road weekend in Wyoming.
Colby had the early edge in front of a great turnout of Cougar faithful, leading 5-3 before stretching the margin out to a 9-5 lead. The Cougars began to settle down and find their stride, stringing a pair of 5-0 spurts to flip the script to a 15-10 home advantage. Tasiah Nunnery, who led the Cougars with 13 kills, hammered down seven in the first set including four within Barton's closing out the set winning 6-of-the-last-7 points for the nine point win.
Barton again opened up the back-breaking lead in the middle of the second set, pushing a one point margin to a seven point lead highlighted by a 5-0 run. A pair of Nunnery kills led the stretch with Mylena Testoni and Victoria Da Silva getting into the mix helping push the gap to eight at 20-12. Two Colby points later, Barton closed it out with another five straight points.
Testoni heated up in the third set in serving up an ace and getting one of her 11 kills on the night to spark an early 5-1 spurt for a 11-6 advantage. Colby cut the margin back to three but Nunnery answered the call with a pair of attacks pushing the margin back out. Molly Norris' pair of attacks helped keep Colby from slicing into the lead before Da Silva and Testoni contributed to a four-pack of points pushing Barton to the brink of match point leading 23-14. The Trojans kept fighting, winning the next two points, then following a Barton match point rattled off five straight before Jaden Boden's rise-n-shine middle attack halted the stretch clinching the match.
Nunnery posted her fifth double-double of the year by adding 15 digs to her team leading kill total as the sophomore from Hays posted her fifth double-double performance in the last six matches. Testoni also had a double night, adding a team high 23 digs for the reigning conference defensive player of the week. Leading the Cougars in attack percentage at .615, Da Silva had 8 kills on 13 swings, to go along with, two of the team's six blocks. Isabella Guedes captained the offense with 31 assists and defensively added 9 digs. Libero Hanna Miller added 17 digs while Joelle LaForce had numerous cover-ups behind the blocks to scoop up 11 digs.