Lady Eagles split matches at home, and split again on the road

This archived article was written by: Sam McGinnis

It was as if the CEU Lady Eagles Volleyball team was homesick and wanted to take their wins on their home court. The past few weeks have been both positive and negative for the team, winning against Colorado Northwestern and SLCC and losing to both Southern and Northern Idaho.
The Eagles’ offence and defense has improved, and they seemed as if they were a better team all around the court. They came across Colorado Northwestern confident and full of energy.
CEU traveled to Colorado to battle out this match on CNCC’s home court. The Eagles wanted to show how much they wanted this win and won in four games because of their solid performance.
When game one started, Colorado pushed and played to their capability, pulling off a win against the Ladies. They haven’t been playing well this season, said coach Brent Martindale, but took the lead in the match.
With a 30-24 was the score of the first game, it woke CEU up and they began to push and play much better. Even though Colorado hasn’t been playing well, when they beat you in a game, it really wakes you up!” Martindale said.
Game two was a complete turn around for the Eagles. They began scoring points left and right and began to become more aggressive.
The Lady Eagles smashed Colorado in the second game, 30-15, and began to do the same in games three and four. They beat Colorado 31-29 in game three, and then won the match 30-28 in game four
Amy Collette played to her fullest potential, making 14 kills and two aces. Jordan Fox had 11 kills and Emily Bowles 10. Emillee Madsen played an amazing game, making 39 assists and 16 digs. She had a team high this game in digs, and showed how much she has improved her game, and intensity on the court.
Jen Maestas came onto the court and played the two final games. She had five kills and no errors. As a team, they began to hit better with a .179 percent hitting average. Also, the team began to make fewer errors in this game, making only 25.
On Friday, the women played SLCC at home. A few weeks earlier, the Lady Eagles lost to SLCC at Salt Lake, so they wanted to beat SLCC. They were more ready to play them when they came to Price, Martindale said.
Fate was on CEU’s side, because they beat SLCC in five. In the first game, the Lady Eagles had an almost perfect game. They came out on the court confident and the crowd was cheering with excitement.
There was a lot of energy on the court during the whole game, but more so in the first game. They smothered SLCC, beeting them 30-18.
Game two was almost identical to game when it came to the energy and excitement. Only in this game, SLCC didn’t want to go out as easy. But, the Lady Eagles pushed harder than SLCC winning 31-29.
Games three and four were all about SLCC. They were determined to make CEU work for their wins, and showed their infamous skills throwing CEU off guard.
They beat the Eagles in the third 30-27 and again fourth 30-25.
Game five was close, but victorious for CEU. The women pushed hard to keep this game from ending up as a loss. They beat SLCC in the fifth to conclude the match 15-11.
“We really pushed hard in practice to work on blocking and defense. It showed, because we shut down SLCC’s hitter from Brazil. Also, we ran good offense keeping them (SLCC) moving around the court,” Martindale said.
Madsen had her match of the year against SLCC. Because of her choices, she had 44 assists. SLCC’s whole team only had 34.
Fox had 18 kills, which includes the match-ending kill in game five. There were three players who had double digits in kills: Fox, Sandra Sorenson and Amy Collette.
The Eagles came across the second ranked team in the nation, College of Southern Idaho.. Last time that CEU played Southern Idaho at home, they were basically smashed on the court because of CSI’s powerful volleyball skills.
This time was no different. Southern Idaho defeated CEU easily in three games.
“Southern Idaho is an awesome team. They showed us how strong they are and we stopped pushing,” said Martindale. “We really didn’t have the offense as the night before and that hurt our chances of winning,” Martindale said.
Their next match was in Northern Idaho. It seems as if Idaho is just a bad luck state for CEU to play, because like Southern Idaho, they lost to Northern Idaho in five games.
The first game was uplifting for the Lady Eagles because they played great. They pushed hard and the intensity was high. All had to be focused to pull off the win for this game, squeeking by 31-29.
In game two, the Lady Eagles looked as if they were confident. They played well, but were not able to capture the win. It was another close game, with the Eagles downed 30-24.
The energy and excitement in game three had to be the game of the match. The game was so close that it looked as if the audience was sweating just as much as the players on the court.
Back and forth the points were scored from both teams, but Northern Idaho was the successful team in this game, pulling ahead and beating the Eagles 33-31.
After losing two games in the match, the Eagles looked as if they didn’t want to let Northern Idaho win in four games. They seemed as if they wanted this match to go into five games.
As soon as game four started, CEU started dominating the court. They played hard and pulled ahead of Northern Idaho. The Lady Eagles took control of that game, with the final score of 30-27.
Since both teams were tied at two and two, it was game five that would determine the final outlook. This was another intense game, but seems as if Northern Idaho wanted it more than CEU and beat them 15-11 to win the match three to two.
The Lady Eagles’ record is now four wins and five losses in conference play. Their goal was to finish out the rest of the season with an eight and four record, but fate obviously didn’t want that to happen. They will now practice hard and take each game one at a time.
CEU may have a chance to take the second place title from SLCC depending on how the rest of the teams play the rest of the season.
CEU has four matches left this season. According to Martindale, the Eagles can win them all. It will be a challenge for them to win these games, because there is not one easy match for the rest of the season.
Their goal is to take the second place position in conference play.
According to Martindale, it will take a lot of work with a little luck to succeed in their goals.