The Vaqueros women’s volleyball team beat LA Pierce in a 3 set match, finishing with a score of 3-0.
The team gave everything to win their second to last game in the first round of the conference. Their goal is to win the conference and to get an automatic bid to the playoffs.
“We’ve been running our conference twice, and currently are in a tie on top of our conference for first place.” Head Coach Kat Niktso said.
The Vaqueros quickly scored after only one minute, and the crowd as well as the bench erupted with cheers.
Close to the first timeout, outside hitter No.13, Kaylin Cooney smashed the ball and scored another point for City College.
After the first timeout the score was 13-4, with the Vaqueros in the lead.
The Vaqueros won the first set with a score of 25-10.
The second set began, and for a short time LA Pierce seemed to catch up to City College.
Niktso´s team wasn’t giving up, and they kept their high energy, hitting numerous kills and ultimately winning the second set 25-14.
Going into the third set, the pressure got too high for LA Pierce and they began to make consistent errors like hitting the ball out of bounds, leading the Vaqueros to win their last set with 25-11.
Neveah Tillet, one of the key players and outside hitter, explained she is really proud of the team, especially because they faced struggles with people being in and out of practice because of illness or injuries.
“I think we worked really good together, we were aggressive and really focused on our game no matter who or what was on the other side of the net,” Tillet said.
Coach Niktso points out the performances of some of the players.
“I thought that Nevaeh, who is number four, had a great attacking night,” Niktso says.
Niktso noted that both middles, Grace Demmel, No. 12, and Carly Hanna, No. 11 also had a solid night in the middle.
“Our center, Brielle (Smith), she’s number 21, I thought she set the ball really well, allowing our hitters to be really effective,” Niktso says.
Looking forward to their next game, Niktso mentioned some things that didn’t work as well as they wanted, such as struggling with serving and communication.
“I thought it was pretty good from our side. We were trying to focus on minimizing our own errors, and I think that from set one to set two to set three, we did a good job of improving on that,” Nitkso said.
Besides it being an important game for the team, it was also a special night to honor breast cancer awareness month.
This game was called “dig pink night” and supports people suffering from breast cancer. The Vaqueros women’s volleyball team decided to donate all funds raised by ticket sales to the Breast Cancer Resource Center to help those affected.
Niktso said a lot of schools are doing fundraising events during breast cancer awareness month but she chose the Breast Cancer Resource Center in particular because they helped her mother-in-law when she was battling breast cancer.
Underlining the importance of breast cancer awareness, the women’s and men’s volleyball team, as well as staff members wore pink warm up shirts. The players also wore pink bows tied to their hair.
Their next game will be Wednesday Oct. 23 at Allan Hancock.
