Spencer sweeps Shroder, snaps 5 game losing streak to win 2nd game of the season
Bring out the brooms. The Spencer Center Wolfpack swept the Shroder Jaguars to secure their first win since Aug 30. Their second win of the season was dominant, winning the first 3 sets, not giving Shroder a chance.
The road to this win was no easy journey, the Wolfpack had lost 5 straight before taking this W on the road. 17 days of grit, hard work, and humbleness led to this commanding win today. Last week, Spencer went 0-3, and made a decent amount of mental mistakes, and an ankle injury for Marzi Hudson in pregame warmups didn’t help. Today, Spencer looked like a brand new team. The Wolfpack always breaks down their huddle with “blood, sweat, and tears!”, and that’s exactly what it took today to win this game.
The first set was a shootout, being tied throughout the game. Despite a few mental mistakes and great plays by Shroder, Spencer overcame the pressure and took over the rest of the set, winning 25-18. The Wolfpack would begin the second set dominant, pushing to an 8-1 lead over the Jaguars. Spencer would then continue to capitalize off of Shroder mistakes and seize momentum to increase the lead to 14-2. Shroder would try to come back, enforcing a 5 point swing, cutting the lead from 12 to 7, 20-13. Spencer would close out the second set and win 25-17. A competitive start to the third set would hand the Wolfpack a 6-4 lead. Momentum would to continue to swing towards Spencer, giving the game girls a 10 point lead and a 17-7 score. Spencer would continue to control the rest of the set, capitalizing off the Jags’ mistakes, leading to a 25-10 Spencer win in dominant fashion.
Lexie Clark (senior) said that the team “played well” and “played way better than we’ve been playing [in the past]”. She also stated the need for the team to be ready when the ball comes over the net, and expressed the desire to be more aggressive in games, as well as playing with intent stating that “every point we got wasn’t intentional”. Marzi Hudson (junior) also stated that “we all did really good” and that the team handled serve receive “pretty well”. She stated that there were “definitely some good hits” and “a couple serves missed”. The biggest thing that she pointed out is that “[the team] didn’t get lazy” which had a been a problem for the Wolfpack this year. The team would often have small bits of momentum, and then get complacent and give up the lead. This is something that didn’t happen today. The Wolfpack stayed hungry, kept their foot down on their opponent, and grinded out a tough victory tonight.
The Wolfpack (2-7) will look to continue their dominant winning style at home against the Oyler Madhatters (6-1) tomorrow night.
-Reuben Whitehead
