PRATT— It was a night best forgotten for the Barton Community College volleyball team Monday at Lesh Sports Arena.

The Cougars struggled to their worst hitting effort of the season in suffering their first Jayhawk West loss. Pratt swept Barton, 25-14, 25-23, 25-12.

The loss drops the Cougars to 5-5 overall and 2-1 in the West. Pratt stayed atop the West standings with a perfect 3-0 mark and 8-3 overall. Hutchinson and Cloud County are both 2-0. Barton is now in fourth.

The only set in which Barton put a scare in the Beavers was the second. Pratt dominated the first and third sets.

“The phrase that comes to mind is ‘it’s not what you do… it’s how you do it’,” Barton coach Phil Shoemaker said. “When I need to go around before the match trying to get people pumped up, it’s not a good sign. We just failed to compete in sets one and three.

“Set two was far, far better, but on the whole it was a poor effort mentally which of course strongly effects physical execution. Had we decided to battle, to compete as strongly as we can it would have been a much different match. Pratt has a nice team, some good athletes, and they executed their plan pretty well.”

Olivia Naccarato paced Barton with five kills followed by Emily Deterding with four. Naccarato had a good night defensively at the net with four blocks.

As a team the Cougars had 19 kills and 17 errors for a season-low .023 hitting percentage. It was similar serving as Barton had just one ace to five errors. The Cougars also committed 11 return errors in three sets.

Lydia Konrade led Barton with 12 digs. Nathalia Gouveia added 10. Mallory McQueen had 14 assists to pace the Cougars.

Barton will look to get back on the winning track tonight when it travels to El Dorado to take on the Butler Grizzles. Butler is 0-2 in the conference and 2-8 overall.

Following the trip to the Power Plant, the Cougars will head to Sterling, Colo. and the Pizza Hut Classic at Northeastern Junior College.  

Barton will play Casper College (Wyo) and the host school Friday. Saturday the Cougars will play Northwest College (Colo) and Western Nebraska. The combined record of those four teams is 32-13.