LANGSTON, Okla. – The Wayland Baptist volleyball team continues inching closer to its longest winning streak in almost a decade.
The Pioneers secured their eighth straight win here Friday night as they opened Sooner Athletic Conference play with a sweep, 25-13, 25-23, 25-15, win over Langston.
"Langston has some very strong athletes, but we have some strong athletes as well," Wayland coach
Jim Giacomazzi said. "When the dust settled both team gave some licks and both received some licks."
Wayland improved to 8-3, while the match marked Langston's first outing of the season after the school put athletics on hold due to COVID-19.
Paxton Patterson led all hitters with nine kills, while redshirt freshman
Alexa Hinojos provided what Giacomazzi called "a beat-down" with a season-high seven kills in nine attempts for a hitting percentage of .667.
Kellie Kozak logged eight kills while
Tatijana Markic had seven and hit .313.
"Overall we are doing some things a little different and I'm beginning to see some positive movement in the direction we want our hitters to go," Giacomazzi said. "But in the same breath I'm disappointed with the number of hitting errors we had, especially balls that were hit without a good approach. Those swings need to be modified and the ball needs to be kept in play and maybe the other team will give us another chance to have a better swing in that rally."
Wayland recorded four solo blocks and eight block-assists, with Kozak logging three each.
Ariel Marquez's 15 digs led the team.
"My goal for our defensive players is to get four digs per set. Ariel exceeded that and averaged five per set," Giacomazzi said.
"In the second set, Langston made some adjustments with their offense and it took us too long to adjust to them tipping to our open areas. Our defense needs to read better and anticipate those tipped balls that get over our block. As a team we made those easy defensive plays much too difficult."
Lucie Mahelova provided 21 assists, while freshman
Elizabeth Wirth got 11.
"I was happy to see Elizabeth play well tonight. This was her first time starting a match and playing all three sets," Giacomazzi said. "She is beginning to understand the importance of getting our middle hitters the ball and playing defense. Our bench stats showed her with 10 digs (she was officially credited with six). That is a huge improvement over the beginning of the year."
The Pioneers dropped in six aces, two each by
Amber Daniel and
Jayla Schultz, against seven errors.
"We have worked a lot on our serving and we did have six service aces, but we had too many service errors. We need to serve more like we do in practice. Three of our service mistakes were just silly," Giacomazzi said.
The good news is we won the match and we can come back tomorrow and try fixing and tweaking until we get it right."
The Pioneers haven't enjoyed a longer win streak since the middle of the 2016 season when the team notched together nine consecutive victories. Wayland can match that win a win in McPherson, Kan., on Saturday at 1 p.m. against Central Christian (2-14, 0-1).
Wayland won 14 straight near the end of the 2014 season, before a loss to Evangel, Mo., in the NAIA National Championship opening round.
