The six graduating seniors on the volleyball squad walked away from their last match in Memorial Gym with a victory on Saturday night when the Vandals downed UT-Arlington in four with scores of 23-25, 25-14, 30-28 and 25-17.
File photo Philip Vukelich | Argonaut
Senior outside hitter Julia Church celebrates after winning a point against La. Tech Nov. 8 in Memorial Gym. Six Vandal seniors contributed to the team’s 3-1 win over UT-Arlington Saturday on Senior Night.
Seniors Janelle Chow, Jenny Feicht, Julia Church, Ryann Carter, Alex Sele and Allison (Walker) Baker were honored after the senior-night win. The team will now travel to New Mexico State for the last regular season match before the WAC Tournament. The Aggies beat the Vandals in five earlier in the season.
With Saturday’s win, the Vandals are in a three-way tie for second place with New Mexico State and UT-San Antonio. The Vandals will control their own fate when they play the Aggies Thursday, but Idaho coach Debbie Buchanan said regardless of the result, she knows her team can win the tournament.
“Whoever we match up with, we just have to understand that we can win,” Buchanan said. “We just have to come out and play really good, we can dominate. Hopefully when we’re on the road, when we’re in Texas, our kids believe that as well and we come out and play hard.”
The Vandals came out flat in the first set of the night and trailed the whole way through en-route to a 25-23 loss to go down 1-0 in the match. Sele said there were some nerves in the first set, but she was happy with the way the team recovered.
“I don’t think we came out as strong in the first set as we should have, but a win’s a win,” Sele said. “It puts us on to our next match that we can focus on. I’m excited that we came out and played tonight and I thought we had a lot of really great moments we can build off of.”
Idaho bounced back to dominate the second set, setting up a crucial third set. Both teams came out hard in the third and it came right down to the wire. Both sides had a chance to close out the back-and-forth set, but it was Idaho that made the final play to win 30-28. Buchanan said winning the long set was important for momentum.
“It was huge,” Buchanan said. “Anytime you cannot go five sets, and keep the momentum going, that’s what you need to do. Sometimes when you go five sets, even if you have control of the match, that letdown of having to go five is the issue. I thought it was huge to for the kids to battle.”
The Vandals then closed out the match in dominating fashion with a 25-17 fourth set to send the seniors off with a win.
Baker led the Vandals with 14 kills and 18 digs for her 19th double-double of the season. Sele also had 13 kills and no errors, hitting a .565. Sophomore Alyssa Schultz also helped the cause with 13 kills
It was a storybook ending for the Idaho seniors, but there are still matches to be played. Sele said she wasn’t dwelling too much on it being her last home match because the team still has the goal to win a WAC title.
“Honestly I haven’t had time to think about it,” Sele said. “I haven’t had time to process it because there’s just so much going on right now. I’m OK with it. We just have to keep moving on and hopefully our team will have a postseason this year. I have closure about it.”
Kevin Bingaman can be reached at [email protected]