MCC Volleyball drops five-set match to Central CC

The McCook Community College volleyball team lost in five sets to Central Community College Wednesday in the Peter and Dolores Graff Events Center.

Central, ranked No. 13 in the NJCAA DII rankings, picked up their fifth straight win topping MCC 25-13, 26-24, 13-25, 20-25, 15-11.

"It took us two sets to warm up and just start playing MCC volleyball," said MCC Coach Hayley Kobza. "We played pretty clean volleyball in that third and fourth set, played pretty good defensively and played better offensively."

She gives the Raiders credit for coming back and playing hard in the final set.

"Central really wanted it more, they wanted to play and weren't going to play timid and played aggressive," Kobza said.

Central takes over the Nebraska Community College Athletic Conference lead at 1-0 and improve to 9-3 on the season.

MCC falls to 11-7 and 1-1 in the NCCAC.

A trio of sophomores paced the hitting attack with 12 kills each: Fernanda Merancio (Lamar, Colo.), Jordan Duzenack (Loveland, Colo.) and Jessie Jerome (Rawlins, Wyo.). Merancio added three blocks, Jerome had 22 digs and three aces.

Greta Bolognini (Bergamo, Italy) had 27 digs and three assists. Caylin Barnett (freshman, McCook) had 10 digs. Freshman Kayten Hagan (Kearney) led the team with 30 assists.

Freshman Romina Martinez (Cochabamba, Bolivia) had eight digs, an assist block and 16 digs.

Sophomore Gabby Caskey (Ogallala) had nine kills, seven assist blocks and a solo block. Gracen Tuttle (sophomore, Ogallala) also had nine kills with two assist blocks and a solo block.

"We have to minimize errors, I think we had 30 attacking errors. We can't be doing that – that's a whole set," said Kobza. "We need to listen to the coaching and do the game plan instead of doing our own. At this point in the season, we can't focus on the other team if we're going to be struggling ourselves."

Next up MCC will travel to Beatrice Friday for a 6 p.m. match against NCCAC opponent, Southeast Community College.

"We are a good team but we are mentally, individually struggling," Kobza said. "We have great individual players but we have to put it together as team."

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