17th ranked Barton Volleyball opens season with straight sweeps including knocking off 6th ranked Navarro #GoBarton

The Barton Community College volleyball team opened the 2024 season this weekend with four sweeps at the Scooter's Coffee Invitational hosted by Garden City Community College.

On Friday the Cougars put together a pair of dominant sweeps, the first coming over Trinidad State College (25-16, 25-23, 25-10) before dispatching Vernon College (25-4, 25-9, 25-11).

In an early season much anticipated test, Saturday morning's action was dominated by the Cougars against 6th ranked Navarro College in taming the Bulldogs in three (25-8, 25-18, 25-15).

Following a near six-hour span of downtime, the Cougars retook their dominance on the court with another impressive sweep over Lamar Community College ((25-10, 25-3, and 25-16) to wind up the weekend.

Barton's next competition comes Thursday beginning the Victory Electric Classic in Dodge City with a 5:30 p.m. first serve against Frank Phillips College. Friday's slate has a 12:30 p.m. match versus Panola College followed by Eastern Arizona College at 6:30 p.m. before concluding the weekend with Saturday's 1:30 p.m. and 5:30 p.m. scheduled matches versus Midland College and Otero College respectively.

All-American Phoebe Reyes got off to a good sophomore season start attacking at a .392 clip with 22 kills in eight sets of action in the four matches.

Kassidy Nixon led with 32 total kills in 12 sets on a .324 accuracy, posting the squad's lone double-double effort on the weekend with a 10-kill, 10-dig effort in the opener versus Trinidad State. Freshman Kiara Aristy's 3.00 kills per set led the Cougars from her five frames of action as Sara Zuluaga Nohava produced a team leading .643 efficiency in her four frames of court time.

The sophomore setter duo of Elena Stankovic and Maurin Reyes keyed the 6-2 offense to an overall .372 efficiency, Stankovic averaging 7.50 assists per set and a team leading 11 service aces with Reyes recording 4.17 aces per set.

Each frontline attacker on the squad recorded three or more kills, Naya Danenberg racking up 16 points on .286 efficiency with another 9 coming from the service line while defensively adding a team leading 38 digs. 

Mina Kaneko also helped anchored the backline with 35 digs, 16 coming in her collegiate debut against Trinidad State with 10 versus the 6th ranked Bulldogs. Fellow freshman Aubrey Olander played 11 of the 12 sets, leading the team with 15 total blocks to go along with 15 kills, Mya Thompson and Anna Wierzbicki next in line with 8 and 7 walls of denial respectively.

Friday Highlights
Winning the first set by nine over Trinidad State, the Cougars found themselves trailing 7-1 in the second, battling back in tying it at 10 in the eventual 25-23 win before cruising to the big fifteen point match clinching victory.

Against Vernon it was all Barton, racing out to a 12-0 lead in a 25-4 win with the second wave of Cougars continuing the dominance holding Vernon to just twenty more points in the final two sets.

Nixon piled up 19 of her 32 kills on Friday, following her 10-10 double effort in the opener with a 9-kill, 9-dig effort against Vernon as P. Reyes had 13 kills in the two matches for a 3.25 kill per set average.

Saturday Highlights
In the morning battle of nationally ranked teams, Barton continued not only its momentum but its dominance in a 25-8 opening set rout over Navarro. Scoring the first 11 points of the second frame, Navarro eventually cut the deficit to three but the Cougars responded to the surge by chalking up a seven point win to be followed by another dominant ten point match clincher.

The long wait for its final match of the weekend did little to derail the Cougars in posting a weekend high .529 attack in outscoring Lamar by 45 points.

Thompson led Saturday's offensive punch with 14 kills on a .400 attack as Nixon was close behind with 13 total kills while Aristy led with a .727 attack in putting down 8 kills in two sets of action.