by John Cusick
The CMU volleyball team is on a roll right now. As they returned home for the first time this year, the Mavericks came back to Colorado and made sure that their play in the TexAnn Invite was no joke.
The Mavericks traveled to Gunnison to play the Western State Mountaineers. There they beat the Mountaineers 3-1 (25-20, 25-23, 11-25, 25-14). The team was led by Mackenzie Edwards as she finished the match with 12 kills. To go along with those kills, Edwards finished with 16 digs, one behind teammate Taylor Woods who finished with a match high of 17.
The win gave the Mavericks their seventh straight win after starting the season 0-2. The Mavericks continued their win streak when they played Westminster College for their home opener of 2016.
The match was dominated by the Mavericks as they swept the Griffins 3-0 (25-11, 25-16, 25-23). The win pushed the win streak of the Mavericks to eight, but head Coach Dave Fleming doesn’t think too much of the win streak.
“It helps our confidence for sure but it’s not something that we’re not looking at. Two years ago we won 20 in a row, so we have a ways to go before we start thinking about how important that streak is,” Fleming said.
The team was led by Gabriela Dias as she finished the match with 15 kills. Following her was Edwards with eight kills, Katie Scherr and Alyssa Chutka both finished with seven kills as well.
The offense is run through the middle hitters in Chutka and Camille Smith. However, Fleming lets senior Ali Svorinic determine what is working best within the offense.
“Ali did a really good job of establishing the middle early with Camille Smith and Alyssa Chutka and that kind of opened up the offense on the outside,” Fleming said.
“Our offense is pretty much based on our middles and then we try and break away from that afterwards,” Svorinic said. “We always come back to establishing our middles because they always do such a great job.”
Although the Mavericks swept the Griffins 3-0, there was some chemistry issues towards the end of the third set.
“We tried some different people. We go to a situational 6-2 where we try another setter on the right side up front just to make us a little bigger and it just wasn’t flowing,” Fleming said of the tight third set.
“Volleyball is a game of momentum. We give them their runs and we have to try and take that back and cut their leads. I think we gave them a little bit longer of a leash,” Svorinic said.
The Mavericks will travel to Denver to take on Regis University on Sept. 23, and then head to Chadron, Nebr. for a match against Chadron State College on Sept. 24.
