MCC Volleyball opens 4-0 with Saturday sweeps

The McCook Community College volleyball team added a couple more wins on the season Saturday with a straight-set win over No. 16 Casper College followed by a five-set win over Laramie County Community College.

In Saturday's second match MCC led Laramie County 2-0, before the Eagles back to win the third and fourth sets and took leads of 8-1 and 10-4 and 13-9 in the final set before the Lady Indians rattled off the final six points of the match to win 15-13.

"I told the girls after that match being down 8-1 just shows that we can overcome adversity with that 'refuse-to-lose mentality,'" said MCC Coach Hayley Kobza. "We had a lot of glitches in that third and fourth set like with communication and not being coachable and we weren't utilizing the shots we were talking about during timeouts."

After losing the first set of the day Friday, MCC won six straight sets Friday and five on Friday before the glitches occurred and the Lady Indians lost the next two sets and found themselves down 8-1 in the tie-breaking set.

"Give the girls credit, they came back and finished aggressively," said Kobza.

Today's two wins came against two Region IX north division teams that battled for their top spot last season.

"I think everybody really had some first weekend struggles, us included," Kobza said.

MCC starts the season 4-0 for the first time since Kobza became head coach in McCook in 2016.

The team continues the home slate with a Labor Day weekend tournament in the Peter and Dolores Graff Events Center. Matches are set for Friday at noon and 6 p.m. against Hill College (Texas) and Iowa Western Community College. On Saturday MCC plays No. 9 Indian Hills (Iowa) at 9 a.m. and Fort Scott (Kan.) at 1 p.m.

Up-to-date information about MCC volleyball including livestream links, schedule, statistics, rosters, photos and more can be found on the MCC Athletics website, www.mccindians.com

McCOOK CC 3, CASPER COLLEGE 0: The Lady Indians took down the No. 16 Thunderbirds 25-15, 25-16, 25-17.

Sophomore Rowan Tribelhorn (Yuma, Colo.) led MCC with 8 kills and added two blocks an ace and two digs. Romina Castro-Martinez, sophomore (Cochabamba, Bolivia) led the way on the block with four along with six kills and three digs. Sophomore Caylin Barnett (Southwest High School) had six kills, three aces and four digs.

Sophomore Cibeles Bothwell (Spring, Texas) led MCC with eight digs and also with four aces. Freshman setter Megan Walker (Haxtun, Colo.) was credited with 17 assists, two aces and two digs.

Freshman Charlee Russick (Berthoud, Colo.) had three kills and two digs and freshman Ailynn Wright (Sterling, Colo.) had three digs and a kill. Ella Verts, freshman, (Marshall, Mo.) had two blocks and a kill

McCOOK CC 3, LARAMIE COUNTY CC 2: The Lady Indians won the first two sets 25-19, 25-14 before LCCC roared back to win 25-16 and 25-19 to force a fifth-set. MCC won the tie-breaker 15-13.

Three sophomores all finished with 10 kills including, Romina Castro-Martinez, Caylin Barnett and Rowan Tribelhorn. Martinez added four solo blocks, two aces and two digs. Barnett had seven digs, one block and once ace. Triblehorn had four solo blocks and three assist blocks and an ace.

Ella Verts had four assist blocks and two kills. Ailynn Wright had five kills and seven digs.

Cibles Bothwell led the MCC defense with eight digs. Megan Walker dished out 29 assists and added two aces, two assist blocks, a kill and two digs. Charlee Russick had two aces.