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Cougars Travel to Face St. Petersburg College


(10/27/09) St. Petersburg, FL-The CCC volleyball team took a short road trip down south to play a match against St. Petersburg College. This was the third time this season the two teams faced one another with the Cougars winning the first two matches 3-0 and 3-1.

St. Pete started off the match with some powerful offense that the Cougars could not stop. Fortunately for CCC, their offensive triple threat of Kile, Hallice and Bucklin was also producing kills, so the two teams went back and forth throughout set one matching point for point. Eventually CCC pulled ahead and won 25-20.

During game two, the Cougars defense again lacked intensity, and the team found itself fighting back from behind several times during the set. Eventually they pulled out the win, 25-22.

For the third set, Coach Denny changed the defensive line up and decided to keep the middle hitters in all the way around in hopes of sparking some life into the defensive play. The move paid off when both Emma Kile and Alyssa Hallice held their own in the back row, and brought a higher intensity to the floor. Clearwater took the third and final set, 25-20.

After the match Coach Denny said, "It was not one of our better matches, but we still played good enough to win. Ashley Lawson was out with a back problem and it really hurt our defensive play not having her out on the court. She usually has 4-5 digs per game, so someone else needed to pick up the difference. All night we struggled defensively, but fortunately our offense played well. Liz Ennis had a good game setting and even scored some critical points with the setter dump. I was especially pleased how we finished games two and three. We have struggled some this season when we get to game point to actually finish it quickly. Tonight in set two, Alyse Sugimoto scored the final point with an ace, and in game three Emma Kile had a stuff block for the winning point."

The Cougars are now 34-4. This weekend they compete for the NCCAA South Region Championship. They are the number one seed going into the tournament at the Kissimmee Civic Center. Their first game will be against Florida Christian College at 11:00 a.m. They will play Piedmont later in the day at 3:00 p.m. Depending on match results, on Saturday the semi finals will be at 1:00 and the championship match will be at 3:00.