In a spine-chilling night of competition after vampires, princesses and minions filled the stands of Prather Coliseum, the Northwestern State University of Louisiana Lady Demons volleyball team defeated the Houston Christian University (HCU) Huskies in a 3-2 set match Thursday during their annual “Kids’ Night.”
The Lady Demons started strong in the game taking the first two sets, scoring 29-27 in the first set and 25-14 in the second set.
NSU capitalized on the errors made by HCU, as the Huskies finished the game with 36 to the home team’s 15 errors.
The mistakes made by the opposing team allowed the Lady Demons to set the pace for the offense going into the later sets. Sean Kiracofe, volleyball head coach, explained how this led to the Lady Demons’ successful Halloween night.
“This game went our way and we capitalized on a bunch of errors, especially in the second set, and kind of rolled through that but they helped us out a lot,” Kiracofe said.
However, HCU soon became aware of the errors that NSU made and took the third set with a score of 25-18 and the fourth set with a score of 25-23. The Huskies tied the match after benefiting from the Lady Demons’ serving mistakes.
After NSU broke their seven-match loss streak against HCU, Kiracofe shared how past games haunt the Lady Demons and the mistakes made were apparent during this game.
“The serving team started to let us down, and once that happened, the stress started to force errors,” Kiracofe said. “Some balls we were picking up—we weren’t—and you’re thinking ‘Oh man, this is the haunting of past matches.’”
Teresa Garza, senior sports and recreation management major and outside hitter, explained how the team had the energy and drive to win this game.
“We started a great competition and ran away with the second set,” Garza said. “We didn’t have that same start in the third set, and there were doubts that we weren’t able to get out of it, but we fought back in the fourth set that helped lead into the fifth set.”
During the fifth set, both teams were battling back-and-forth trading who was taking the lead. It was a consistent fight over the match point until the Lady Demons stuck it out with a 19-17 win on the last serve.
The key to scoring against the Huskies was the critical last drive and reading how HCU’s defense handled the attacks. Gabby Seeds, a freshman setter with a double major in communication and biology, shared how she prepared before setting the ball.
“Well I have confidence in all my hitters, so I spread the ball out,” Seeds said. “I look at the other team’s defense, and I see if they have a shorter block on one side; then, I feed it to Reagan and, if there is a shorter block on the right side, I feed it to the other hitter.”
Seeds had one of her best performances against HCU after having 15 kills on 30 error-free attempts in the second set. She described what it felt like to play in the second set with motivation from her team.
“It was really amazing, and it was one of the best performances we had in a while, and being able to clean up the error problems we had so quickly was really amazing,” Seeds said.
There will be no rest for the Lady Demons, as they look to gain another win against the McNeese State University Cowgirls on Saturday, Nov. 2 at 11 a.m. in Lake Charles.
