Volleyball Beats Pesky Penguins; Wrap Up Horizon League
Rob Ivory
Issue date: 11/16/09 Section: Sports
|
Now he can put Horizon League regular season Champions to an NCAA appearance, Horizon League Champions, and second most wins as a Vikings volleyball coach, since the Vikings beat Youngstown State in three straight sets on Friday night at Woodling Gym.
The 3-0 win (25-19, 25-18, 25-13) brought the Vikings their 25th win on the year and their 13th win in the Horizon League. In fact, it is the first time in 26 years that a Viking volleyball team has reached 25 wins, but it is the seventh time that the Vikes have gotten to that plateau.
"It doesn't seem possible, but we have great senior leadership," the coach said during the postgame celebration. "They have gotten us ready and prepared for 99% of the matches and they have done a great job for us."
The Vikings did not have an easy ride in the first two sets of the match as Youngstown State came out and would not let CSU run over them. The Vikings did look like they were going to take care of business quickly, as they bounced out to a 7-1 lead as sophomore Megan Barhorst took four straight serves for points before surrendering a service error to the Penguins. From that point the Pens were no farther away than four points from tying the match. But CSU would score ten of the last 17 points to win the first set in without much worry after the few hiccups.
"They're a good team, they battled," Viking senior Beth Gruelich said while enjoying their festivities.
The Penguins did not let the loss go to their heads as they had leads early in the set of 3-2, 6-3, 9-5, 10-8, but let the Vikings back into it and the Vikes tied it at 10 a piece. From that part on, the Vikings would outscore Youngstown State 15-8 and take a commanding 2-0 and knew that the night was to be theirs.
"They pushed us there the first two games pretty hard and when it was time to make plays I thought we really stepped up and make a couple of plays to separate ourselves," Voss said of both determined sides.
Finally, the third set belonged all to the Vikings and the celebration began after another great regular season. Finally Chuck Voss had hunted down one of the major goals he was missing as coach, a first place finish in the league. Voss had finished 2nd in the league three times and no higher than fourth in his other six years at CSU.
"It seems like the season has gone by so fast," Voss said after the Vikings beat down.
Be the first to comment on this story