The Hampton-Dumont-CAL volleyball team went to five sets for the third time in as many matches when it hosted Clarion-Goldfield-Dows Thursday. After several swings of momentum, the Cowgirls prevailed in a thriller, as aired on 104.9 KLMJ and RadioOnTheGo’s YouTube channel. The set scores were 19-25, 25-20, 25-15, 22-25, 15-7.
The Bulldogs had the early advantage. After the first set was tied at 19-19, Hampton-Dumont-CAL scored six straight to take a 1-0 lead. But the Cowgirls answered in the second set to tie the match at 1-1. Set 3 was the most lopsided, with the Cowgirls pulling away due in part to many mistimed swings by the Bulldogs, who also missed 15 serves throughout the match. Clarion-Goldfield-Dows went up 19-11 in Set 4, but the Bulldogs pulled off an epic comeback to send it to a fifth set. Hampton-Dumont-CAL led during the early part of the set, but the Cowgirls rallied for the road win.
“I was happy with what I was seeing in set one, I thought we were kind of getting in the rhythm and for whatever reason set two, we did what we’ve been doing lately and really getting down, and we can’t do that,” Hampton-Dumont-CAL coach Sarah Miller says. “We can’t put ourselves in such a deficit that it’s really hard for us to come back. I saw a lot more not great connections tonight than I’ve seen in the past. We just had some people off, not really having a lot of confidence, and we need to keep working on that.”
“I did a lot of subbing tonight, and sometimes it worked in our favor, sometimes it didn’t. I was proud to see when Aliyah Swieter come in, she really stepped up for us. I’d like to see her get some more time. We’re young, like I said before, but again, we can’t make that excuse. We have to just keep on building on our fundamentals and make sure that we’re increasing our skill level each time. That fourth set was obviously exciting, but we had to keep that momentum and keep on going. And it was our serve receive once again that was really hurting. We had a lot of missed serves, and we can’t do that.”
In their next action, the Bulldogs (1-2, 1-1 NCC) will be at a tournament at Belmond-Klemme Saturday. The Cowgirls (3-4, 1-1 NCC) will play at Saturday’s tournament at South Hardin.
