HILLSBORO, Mo. – The Missouri State University-West Plains Grizzly Volleyball team picked up its 14th Region 16 title Saturday afternoon, Nov. 1, when they defeated the Mineral Area College Cardinals, Park Hills, Missouri, 21-25, 24-26, 25-22, 25-19, 15-12 in the region championship match at Jefferson College in Hillsboro, Missouri.
The Grizzlies, now 24-12 and ranked 16th in the nation by the National Junior College Athletic Association (NJCAA), will host the NJCAA District N Championship Match at 2 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 8, in Joe Paul Evans Arena at the West Plains Civic Center. Their opponent will be the Monroe College Mustangs, New Rochelle, New York, who defeated Harford Community College, Bel Air, Maryland, 25-14, 25-14, 25-10 in the Regions 15 and 20 Championship Tournament.
“They’re going to be a tough team,” Grizzly Volleyball Head Coach Paula Wiedemann said of the Mustangs. “We need to study some film and determine their strengths and weaknesses. We will have to be ready to play against a team that’s playing with a lot of emotion and a team that’s ready to prove something.”
A trip to the District N Championship Match looked to be in doubt for the Grizzlies early in Saturday’s Region 16 Championship Match. The Cardinals, who received votes in the final NJCAA poll of the season, soundly defeated Jefferson College in three straight sets in the region semifinals on Friday, and they were ready to take home a region championship of their own.
“Mineral Area and Jefferson had split two very long matches earlier in the season, so I knew if either one of them won the semifinal match easily in three, the winner would be ready to play, and that’s exactly what Mineral Area did,” Wiedemann said. “Our girls were ready to play Saturday, but they were a little tight and Mineral Area came out on fire. They came out and took that first set, which I think was the first time we’d lost a first set in a month.”
The first-set loss made the Grizzlies a little antsy in the second. They played better, Wiedemann said, but Mineral Area didn’t let up on the pressure, and the Grizzlies dropped the second set.
“You really can’t practice a do-or-die scenario in this situation, so it’s up to the girls to respond, and it was at that point I started seeing something different in them. They started trusting each other and played through points and did the things that had carried them to this point. They worked together, gave each other confidence, and that was huge,” Wiedemann said. “Even though they were still making mistakes, they were picking each other up and playing through them.”
The Grizzlies took the lead in the third set and never let it go, and they continued that momentum into the fourth set, where they took the early lead and kept the pressure on the Cardinals. The fifth set turned into a battle, as the Grizzlies only held an 8-7 advantage at the point when the team switched sides. The Cardinals grabbed two quick points following the switch, “but we took off from there and got up 14-11. Even though they picked up an extra point, we felt it at that point,” the coach said.
“Mineral Area played fantastic,” Wiedemann said. “It was a well-played match on both sides. It was a match in which you hated for someone to lose, but it really felt good to win.
“Watching the girls and how they handled that pressure and how they went to what works to handle that pressure was huge,” she continued. “They stopped forcing things and just started playing. They became more consistent, and I cannot be more proud of the way they handled the whole situation.”
Freshman middle attacker Penny Liu led the team offensively with 27 kills on 45 attempts with eight errors for an attacking percentage of .422. She also led the team in points earned with 29.5. Freshman outside hitter Pulotu Manoa had 19 kills on 46 attempts with seven errors for an attacking percentage of .261. Freshman setter Susannah Kelley led the team in assists with 54.
Sophomore libero Alyssa Aldag led the Grizzlies defensively with 32 digs and a passing rating of 2.76, and Manoa led the defensive effort at the net with three solo blocks. “Defensively, we kept ourselves in each point and that made the difference,” Wiedemann said. “Alyssa dug the ball well, but both Kaili Simmons and Brianna Zebert had 21 digs apiece and some big ones at crucial times. Offensively, we began to take better care of the ball in the third and fourth sets, which gave us the momentum going into the final set. Also, we stopped forcing the ball on offense.”
For more information about the Grizzly Volleyball team, visit the team’s website at http://wp.missouristate.edu/grizzly/vb/. Complete team statistics can be found at http://stats.njcaa.org/sports/wvball/2014-15/div1/teams/MissouriStateUniversityWestPlains.