Caryn Westrick sets up her offense vs. College of Idaho.
Big Crowd Watches No. 15 Raiders Beat No. 6 College of Idaho in 5
ASHLAND, ORE. -- The 15th-ranked Southern Oregon volleyball team overcame a poor hitting night to knock off sixth-ranked College of Idaho 26-24, 18-25, 16-25, 25-22, 15-13 in front of just over 1,000 vocal fans at McNeal Pavilion.
The Raiders (15-2 overall) and Coyotes (13-2) are now tied atop the Cascade Conference standings with 9-1 records. SOU hosts Eastern Oregon Saturday night.
“I’m proud of the way we kept fighting despite not playing our best at times,” SOU head coach Josh Rohlfing said. “They (College of Idaho) are a very good team and we stayed after it all match. Now our match tomorrow with Eastern Oregon is huge. We can’t afford a letdown against them.”
Junior Chelsea Hartman had 12 kills to lead the Raiders. Leanne Stennett had 11 kills and 10 digs and Leah Bergstrom had 10 kills. Angela Spieker finished with 35 assists and Becky Johnstone had 25 digs.
Ciciley Fox had a match-high 15 kills for the Yotes and Naomi Reimer had 11 kills and eight digs.
After regaining form to win the fourth set, Southern jumped out to a 6-2 lead in the fifth set following an attack error by the Yotes. College of Idaho battled back and tied the set at 9-9 and took leads of 12-11 and 13-12 to put the Raiders’ backs against the wall.
An attack error tied the set at 13-13 and on the next serve SOU’s Becky Johnstone laid out to dig an attack by the Yotes, but the Yotes thought the ball had hit the floor and the whistle had blown. SOU’s Dolores Christensen kept playing and took the pass from Johnstone and dumped the ball behind the C of I defense to give the Raiders a 14-13 lead.
After a long conference in which the officials ruled that in fact there was no whistle, SOU won the match on the next serve following a College of Idaho attack error.
After SOU won the opening set, the Coyotes looked impressive in winning the next two sets and forcing the Raiders into 18 errors and only 19 kills.
Heather Porter had back-to-back kills to give SOU the victory in the fourth set.
The victory snapped the Yotes 27-match Cascade Conference win streak. The last setback came last year in Ashland.