My throat’s a little sore,

but man that was fun!

I like to think I did pretty well in my first trip back behind the mic in over three years. Stumbled a couple of times, but hey, it happens. Lots of spikes, blocks, and aces, as our girls pretty powerfully defeated St. Martin’s University. It was a nice rebound match after a pretty big dissing in the polls. To drop from #13 to #17, after losing on the road to your archrival, seems like a big fall to me. But no matter! Back upwards this week.

The first set of the match was the least competitive. Behind long runs on serve from Emily Cotter and the match’s leading scorer Marlayna Geary, Western cruised to a 25-11 laugher. The second set started out more competitive, with SMU taking a couple of early leads and being as close as 10-9 as it went on, but an 8-point run on serve from Jennica ‘Ginger’ McPherson put it out of reach for the Saints, as 14-11 quickly became 22-11. The third set was the closest of the match, but our girls still won easily 25-18.

#17 Western Washington d. St. Martin’s (25-11, 25-14, 25-18)

Geary, as I said, was the leading scorer for the Vikings, with 13 kills and four service aces (I sure called her name a lot). Another name I called frequently was Kayla Erickson, who matched Geary’s 13 kills but was far more efficient, hitting .478 to Geary’s still-pretty-good .290. Gotta mention the lefty McPherson, who had five kills without an error to hit .625 for the match.

Kristyn Ross led the way for the Saints with a double-double, 10 kills and 12 digs, but her 8 hitting errors left her with a meager .062 hitting percentage. The best hitter for St. Martin’s was Teilissa Tua (pronounced TAY-lisa…I made sure to ask the coach before the match), who didn’t have an attack error until the final set and even then made only one, to finish at 8/1/14 for a splendid .500 mark hitting.

Though the Saints had the advantage in blocking at 5 to 3, the Vikings hit a solid .347 to just .112 for Saint Martin’s. The Saints had trouble finding the floor, but even more trouble keeping their swings in bounds. A mark of an inexperienced team.

I was pleased that the marketing people were in action tonight, doing lots of little games and contests to excite the people and award some nice prizes. As I sort of guessed, they weren’t present a couple weeks back simply because school wasn’t yet in session.

And now to rest my voice for Saturday! That’s a much more significant match coming up, against the Western Oregon Wolves. In the preseason GNAC poll, Western (WWU, my school) was named as the favorite to win the league, but Western Oregon actually got more first-place votes. It’s a huge match and I expect a big crowd. It’s gonna be awesome!!!