The Barton Community College volleyball team fought off the upset bid Saturday evening in Dodge City by handing Dodge City Community College its first loss with a 25-14, 15-25, 25-19, and 26-24 victory.
The second conference road victory of the year improves Barton to 3-0 and 11-5 on the season, while dropping Dodge City from the unbeatens in sliding 1-1 and 4-1.
Next up for Barton is a pair of home contests against nationally ranked teams beginning Monday versus No. 9 Seward County Community College and Wednesday against No. 19 Butler Community College. First serve for each of the contests slated for 6:30 p.m. at the Barton Gym with free admission.
A theme in all four sets, the teams battled mostly point for point through the early stages. Joelle LaForce's kill began Barton's climb out of a 12-10 deficit in the opener with a pair of Mylena Testoni kills and a Victoria Da Silva and Isabella Guedes block capping a 7-0 spurt later for an 18-13 Cougar lead. Following a Dodge City point, Barton rattled off another seven straight to clinch the opener behind a dominant .448 attack.
As good as the Cougars were in the first set, errors and more errors plagued the Cougars in the second frame as service receive and attack were off sync leading to a dismal .042 offensive performance. The Conquistadors took advantage of the Barton slump in owning the net play and added three service aces to build an 18-11 lead. Barton was never able to string multiple points together the rest of the way and the rejuvenated Conquistadors put the hammer down with the final three points to win by ten.
Dodge City carried the momentum into the third in jumping out to a 4-0 lead. The Cougars clawed back to tie it at seven only to have the Conquistadors fire back with five of the next six points expanding the margin to 12-8. Led by a pair of Da Silva kills and a teamed up wall of denial with Guedes, Barton sprung in front for the first time at 17-16. The Cougars expanded the gap to two on three occasions before breaking away with the final four points in taking a 2-1 match lead.
Attacks from Molly Norris, Nunnery, and Da Silva pushed an early fourth set lead to 12-10. The teams traded points with Testoni's kill putting Barton up 16-15 but the Conquistadors strung three straight for a two point lead. Barton responded with three of their own but again Dodge City responded with three straight to lead 21-19. Following a Barton point, the Conquistadors once again strung together a trio of points and looked to be on their way to forcing a fifth set leading 24-20. A service error and Nunnery kill prompted a Dodge City timeout up by two but did little to slow down the comeback. Nunnery pounded down another kill and following the net blockade of Guedes and Buse Kocakaya, punished the Conq court with two more attacks to seal the comeback and hold off a decisive fifth set.
Unofficially recording ten kills in the fourth set alone, Nunnery led the Cougars with 18 kills on 42 swings. Adding 13 digs to the stat sheet, Nunnery also posted her fourth straight double-double and sixth of the last seven matches. Testoni finished one kill shy of a double-double, recording 18 digs to go along with 9 kills on an efficient .474 attack percentage and a pair of service aces. Da Silva finished with 8 kills on a .444 attack while contributing a team tying two blocks each with Guedes and Kocakaya. Guedes keyed the offense with 48 assists to go along with 12 digs for her sixth double-double of the year while libero Hanna Miller led the squad with 23 digs.