Cougars serve up sweep of Garden City #GoBarton

Saturday afternoon was exactly a much needed match for the Barton Community College volleyball team against a struggling Garden City Community College squad as the Cougars picked up their second conference win of the season with a sweep at the Barton Gym 25-12, 25-12, and 30-28.  Serving up twelve aces, the win improves Barton to 10-10 on the season and 2-5 in the Jayhawk Conference, while Garden City falls to 3-15 on the year and 1-4 in league play. The Cougars will next head to Dodge City Community College on Wednesday night with a 6:30 p.m. first serve.

The Cougars jumped out to an early 3-0 early lead only to have Garden City answer right back with a five point run to take a 5-3 lead. Still trailing at 8-7, Monique Oliveira's kill lit a spark as Barton would go on an 8-0 run capped by the assisted block of Oliveira and Averie Warehime The Cougars never looked back as they took care of the Broncbusters scoring 19 of the final 23 points for the runaway 25-12 opening set win.

Barton got it going midway through the second set when Kate Deterding went into a frenzy of her own beginning with a monster kill for an 11-8 lead before rattling off four straight of her career high six service aces in the match pushing the lead to seven. Barton would push their lead out 19-11 after another service ace, this time by Kaila Harris, forcing Garden City to burn their final timeout. From there the Cougars closed out the second set on a 6-1 stretch to rack up its second straight 25-12 score.

With Barton looking to be in full control of the match, the Broncbusters would not go away easy as they jumped out to quick 3-0 lead stretching it out to 11-7. A Kailey Harris kill sparked a 5-0 run to give the Cougars their first lead in the set at 12-11 only to have the Broncbusters reel off five straight to regain the lead 16-13 and force a Barton timeout. The Cougars clawed back to cut it to 17-16 after an assisted double block from Warehime and Oliveira but Garden City maintained the advantage until a trio points gave Barton sniffing at match point with 23-22. The Broncbusters strung a pair of points to hold off the party in taking over the lead but the Cougars answered three Garden City set points to eventually get consecutive Oliveira kills to flip the momentum before finally getting the match win with the final two points of the 30-28 victory.

Six Cougar recorded five or more kill with Oliveira and Lainey Conceico leading the squad with seven as the team struck for a .212 kill percentage while committing just ten errors on 132 attacks. Harris had the only two solo blocks in the match while Warehime lead the Cougars in assisted blocks with six of the teams fourteen while hitting .462 with six kills on thirteen swings. Deterding's six service aces led the squad's season high twelve service aces while fellow freshman Kaila Harris posted her first collegiate double-double with a thirteen assist and thirteen dig performance.