Florida Gulf Coast downs Stetson in first Sand Volleyball match at home – Volleyball news
The Florida Gulf Coast Eagles clashed with the women’s sand volleyball team of Stetson University on Friday, March 30.
Estero Community Park hosted the incredible action of sand volleyball, while the Eagles profited the home advantage. They held off visiting Stetson squad for 3-2 victory.
Following a great performance against the Seminoles of Florida State University last week, the FGCU girls continued with success and defeated the Stetson. This is for the first time in the history of FGCU programme history that Eagles seized back-to-back
victories. Eagles have now improved to an overall record of 2-3 in the 2012 season.
The duo of Gigi Meyer and Camil Dominguez opened the day for Eagles. They were challenged by Stetson’s Claudia Kalin and Stephanie Marin. The home side started out well and secured the opening frame with two points, 21-19. The visiting tandem hit back aggressively
in the following set and managed to take sweet revenge by posting 21-17 win over the Eagles.
However, Meyer and Dominguez bounced back in game and controlled the action in final set. Stetson was sent to 1-2 defeat as Eagles closed third set at 15-13.
In the next run, pairing of Jill Hopper and Whitney Masters kept the winning streak of FGCU as they overpowered the opponents in straight sets. The SU players failed to penetrate the power of killing spikes by the Eagles and accepted defeat. The final sets
scores were 21-18, 21-19.
SU bagged its first win in the third session as the opposite Eagles’ pair forfeited. Karina Mambuca and Olivia Mesner represented FGCU but one of the players got injured and the play was stopped.
As a result, the SU pair earned the winning status. The scoreboard showed the overall score of 2-1 at the end of third session.
As the day progressed, Eagles’ No. 3 pairing of Brooke Kohler and Brittany Muse took centre stage. They saw Katie DiGirolamo and Alisha Hoffman of Stetson on the other side of the net. The Eagles already had a better winning record against SU.
Hence, the duo of Kohler and Muse kept the momentum going and pushed the visiting pair behind the attack line. They SU players could not put with the heavy strike of volleys from the hosts and fell to 0-2 (17-21, 11-21) loss in the game.
By third session win, Eagles settled for victory. Nonetheless, the final session of the match was still left to be played. Stetson’s Kaley Melville and Julie Bassett gave a good competition to FGCU’s Holly Youngquist and Kaitlin Holm in the fifth session
and claimed 2-1 (17-21, 21-13, 15-10) victory.
On the whole, Eagles settled for 3-2 victory of Stetson in the match. Next up, the Eagles are scheduled to take on Owls of Florida Atlantic University. Eagles will serve as the hosts of the match as the Estero Community Park will provide the backdrop for
the match.
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