Thanks to sophomore setter Jasbelle Cruz, the Barton Community College volleyball team got off to a good start against Pratt on Wednesday night at Kirkman Activity Center.
Cruz led an 8-0 run in the first game, and the Lady Cougars won the Kansas Jayhawk Community College Conference Western Division match in four sets, 25-20, 23-25, 25-22 and 25-15.
“I think we’re finally starting to see things click that we’ve been looking for the last three weeks,” said Barton head coach Andrea Rasmussen, who took over as head coach before the season. “That’s the thing that we’ve been working on the last couple weeks in practice, building runs ourselves instead of letting other teams build runs.
“We started off really great. (Cruz) started off real strong with her serve.”
Cruz didn’t finish the game, coming out with an injured left thumb.
“It’s nice to see us putting things together, even with Jas going down,” Rasmussen said. “It’s good to see them making it work without one of our starting athletes. We think she dislocated it, so hopefully, she’ll be all right.”
Pratt recovered in the second game, taking the lead at 10-9 and never relinquishing it.
The Lady Beavers (4-7 overall, 1-3 KJCCC West) rode the momentum into the third game, but Barton tied the set at 19-all before winning 25-22.
“We need to eliminate our mistakes,” Rasmussen said. “We make a lot of mistakes, and we make it really easy for other teams to score on us. When we get our chance to clean up our shots, we really start to play well.
“We talked about basically just cleaning up our ball control, and being able to clear our heads.”
The Lady Cougars led the entire fourth game for the win.
Barton (3-8, 2-1) hosts Dodge City on Monday night, starting at 6:30.