by Alan Hoskins, KCKCC sports information
Kansas City Kansas Community College suffered a backbreaking opening set loss and could never quite recover in a 3-1 loss to Fort Scott Saturday.
Despite the loss, the Blue Devils (5-3) stayed a half game ahead of Fort Scott (5-4) for fourth place in the Jayhawk Conference heading into a home match Thursday with second place and No. 9 ranked Highland (6-1) at 6:30 p.m. The match will be streamed on the KCKCC Blue Devil website.
The Blue Devils took a 21-18 lead in the opening set against Fort Scott only to have the Greyhounds take seven of the final eight points for a 25-22 win. KCKCC did rally for a 25-22 win jump-started by three straight Cassidy Crist kills midway through the match but Fort Scott pulled away with back-to-back 25-17 wins to close out the match.
“We did not control our side well and allowed too many runs late in sets,” KCKCC coach Mary Bruno-Ballou said. “And we couldn’t control Julian Squire, a first team All-American last year who had 24 kills. No conference match is easy; the toughest conference in DII volleyball.”
Crist, the national Division II leader in kills, had 20 kills and Michelle Dvorak 13 while Adriana Velez stayed atop the national lead in assists with 44. Kelcey Hund led in digs with 14.
“We earned points well but had too many hitting errors,” Bruno-Ballou said. “We also need to improve on blocking and defense in the coming weeks. But all of those things can be fixed.”