The night couldn't have gone any worse for the Barton Community College Volleyball team as nothing seemed in sync dropping three quick sets to Colby Community College 25-22, 25-10, and 25-18. The loss is the fifth straight at the Barton Gym to Colby, suffering its third consecutive conference match to open the season dropping to 8-4 while the Trojans' ninth straight win in the series improves Colby to 9-1 on the season and 2-0 in conference play.
"Disappointed," said a near speechless Head Coach Brandon Stephenson. "I really thought we were starting to turn the corner this weekend especially in the way we played against Western Nebraska but obviously we have a long way to go."
As most of the nation took Monday's Labor Day holiday off from work, in a lot of ways so did the Cougars with a paltry .082 attack on a season three-set low of just twenty-seven assists.
"We are suffering a lot of growing pains," Stephenson said. "I know I've said it before and I keep repeating myself, but this season is definitely going to be a learning curve. Night's like this will really test us and we'll find out more about this team real soon."
Barton will stay in conference play on Wednesday as the Cougars make the short drive south to face Pratt Community College in a 6:30 p.m. first serve at the Dennis Lesh Sports Arena.
It looked promising for the Cougars early in the match taking an early 5-2 lead after a double assist block from Averie Warehime and Kelsie Antcliff. Barton would stay out in front for most of set grabbing their largest lead of the night at 12-8 in forcing Colby to burn a timeout. Barton fought off a 4-0 run shortly thereafter to maintain the lead but Colby stuck around long enough to string a pair of points in breaking the set's seventh tie causing the Cougars to call a timeout suddenly trailing 22-21. Colby then rattled off two more points for set point as the teams traded the subsequent two tallies as the Trojans stole opening set 25-22.
If the lugnuts holding on the tire were starting to get loose in the first set, Barton was quickly reaching for the spare as Colby grabbed early control taking seven of the first ten points. Gaining the point coming out of a timeout, it was the last point Barton would earn for a while as the Trojans demoralized the Cougars with a 7-0 run in taking a ten point 14-4 lead. With the Cougars unable to string points together but once in the set, Colby struck for a trio of points to grow the lead even more before closing out scoring five of the last six for the 25-10 rout.
Posting her second consecutive and fourth double-double of the season, Carolina Goncalves' kill began the set with the teams trading two point spurts in battling to an eight point tie. From there it was pretty much all Colby beginning with a 5-0 run to gain separation before breaking open the set outscoring Barton 6-1 for a 17-12 lead. After trading back and forth points, Colby would later put any hope of a Barton comeback stringing a trio of points for the 25-18 match clincher.