Women's Volleyball Huskies surge to 4-0 after weekend road sweep

The Huskies dug deep to defeat both the Olds College Broncos and Red Deer Polytechnic Queens, winning a four-set battle Friday in Olds before reverse sweeping the Queens on their home court.  
 
“It wasn’t a fully smooth weekend, but particularly the second day we were very happy with how we played, how we fought,” Sloan said. “I’m very proud of them of how they maintained their composure, especially being down 0-2. We were mentally really tough that day.  
 
“We wanted to bank some wins early this year and we’re doing that.”  
 
Friday, the Huskies won the opening two sets by 25-21 scores before dropping the third. Quickly recovering from the set loss, the Huskies closed out the match with a 25-16 fourth set win.
 
It also wasn’t a game where one single member of the Huskies took over either, but rather had everyone contributing in their own area and holding up their end of the equation to equal the victory. Taya McCarthy led the team with eight kills while Karlene Kaminski and Amanda Onyeukwu each had six.  
 
Saige Kehoe had three aces from the service line. Kaminski had 11 of the team’s 41 digs in the match while Jordi Hazen had 15 assists in the setter position. Five different Huskies had a block with Onyeukwu collecting a pair of blocks to lead the team Friday night.  

Saturday, the Huskies appeared headed for their first loss of the season down two sets to the Queens in Red Deer, but engineered a reverse sweep with sets wins of 27-25, 26-24, and 15-11 to close out the match.  

“We beat Red Deer because we didn’t spend a lot of time worrying about needing to beat Red Deer,” Sloan continued. “We just wanted to play better than we had the day before; that was our focus. We started to do that, even in the second set when we lost a close one we were playing much better volleyball, playing much harder and that kept our mindset level in that we just kept going." 
 
Kaminski led the team with 15 kills while Onyeukwu had 12. Kehoe had eight service aces, Erika Box had 31 assists handling setter duties, and Drew Jacobson had a team-leading 16 digs. 
 
“That game was full of four-point runs both ways. Being able to weather theirs knowing that we’re going to get our runs afterwards we were just really solid mentally.” 
 
At 4-0, the Huskies have put in the work early to keep themselves on the right side of the playoff picture. To keep themselves there, they’ll have to make a run through the South Division with their remaining first semester matches all against the opposing division.  
 
That includes their next home date Friday, November 8 against the Ambrose University Lions. First serve in that match is scheduled for 6:00pm.