VALLEY CITY – The Valley City State volleyball team took down the defending national champion and rival University of Jamestown in straight sets Wednesday in front of a full crowd at the W.E. Osmon Fieldhouse.
The Vikings took the sweep by final set scores of 32-30, 25-21 and 27-25. It is VCSU's third win over a nationally ranked team this season. VCSU, who is in the receiving votes category of the NAIA Top 25 Coaches' Poll, improves to 19-4 on the season while No. 12 Jamestown drops to 16-7 overall.
"We had 12 votes in the last poll and I hoped we could gain some respect," said head coach
Michelle Meiklejohn. "Now we're getting some more votes, and some people are talking about us but after tonight I hope everybody's talking about us."
It doesn't get much closer than Wednesday night's matchup as two sets went into extra points. For the match, Jamestown held an edge on total block points (11-10) and total kills (47-46), but also committed more attack errors on the night (25-24). VCSU held a 3-2 lead on service aces and the teams were deadlocked at 93 digs apiece.
The Vikings held Jamestown to its lowest attack percentage of the season (.122), helped by 5 blocks apiece from
Danielle Hagler,
Mardi Scutchings and
Morgan Freije.
The battle started in the very first set as neither team led by more than two points early on. VCSU finally started to pull away at 23-20 on a big block from Scutchings and Freije, but Jamestown came back to tie the set at 24. After trading set-point opportunities, VCSU would finally take the set 32-30 on a
Bailey Nelson kill paired with back-to-back attack errors from Jamestown's Aleah Zieske.
VCSU then opened the second set with a 6-2 advantage that helped the Vikings maintain control most of the way. The Vikings led by as much as six points at 22-16 when Jamestown took a timeout to regroup. The Jimmies started to come back with a 4-1 run, but it wasn't enough as the Vikings held on to win the set 25-21.
In the third set, VCSU used a 7-2 run capped by a
Bailey Nelson kill to build a 17-12 advantage. The Jimmies wouldn't go down without a fight, answering with a 5-0 run to tie the set at 17. VCSU built a 23-19 lead after a five-point rally including a pair of blocks from
Danielle Hagler and
Emma Lucas, but the Jimmies battled back to hold a tie at 24 and 25. The Vikings put it away on a final Nelson kill to take the thrilling set, 27-25, and finish the sweep over the Jimmies.
Wednesday's victory is the first time VCSU has defeated Jamestown since the 2011 season. Senior outside hitter
Bailey Nelson is proud of how it finally all came together for VCSU.
"One thing we've been focusing on this season is finishing those sets in the last few points," she said. "Jamestown is a really good team and they're going to fight their way back in. We showed that we can also finish those games and it's something we haven't always been able to do so it feels really good to prove we can."
Wednesday's battle required strong defense as libero
JayCee Richter's season-best 30 digs led four Vikings with double figure digs.
Delani Clarke added 18 digs and
Ellie Rush chipped in 12 for VCSU.
Sadie Hansen finished with a double-double of 39 set assists (13.0 assists/set) and 11 digs.
On the offensive side, Scutchings totaled a team-best 10 kills for the Vikings. Nelson, Hagler and Lucas each chipped in nine kills and Freije recorded seven.
Jamestown's Ellie Holen led all players with 37 digs while Aleah Zieske's 13 kills led three Jimmies in double figure kills. Paige Oswald and Lily Bersch each posted 19 set assists for Jamestown.
UP NEXT: VCSU has the weekend off before returning to conference action at Mayville State next Wednesday, Oct. 18 at 6 p.m.
