Lady Vandals split weekend games, win Tuesday

The Eureka County High volleyball team had a league double header last weekend against Wells and Jackpot. The Lady Vandals traveled to Wells on Friday and eventually headed further east on Saturday to face Jackpot and split the two games.

Friday’s matchup against Wells proved to be a tough contest for the Lady Vandals, especially at the net. “Wells is a much taller team, with a big presence at the net,” Eureka coach Kati Benson said.

The size of Wells coupled with an off performance from the Lady Vandals led to a loss in 3 straight games. The scores were 25-19, 25-15, and 25-16 all in favor of Wells. This was Eureka’s first league loss of the season. Elsie Etchegaray had five kills and Cassie Fitzwater had 12 digs for Eureka against the Lady Leopards.

Saturday, the Eureka girls regrouped and headed on to Jackpot for another league contest. Eureka and Jackpot played both of their league contests on Saturday and the Lady Vandals took both matches to sweep the season series to improve their league record to 3-1 on the season.

“We struggled with the first game of the second match, but Bridgette Bacon came on strong in the second game to serve 11 points in a row,” Benson mentioned as a bright spot against Jackpot. Bacon also had 12 digs in the match while Cassie Fitzwater had 6 kills in the second match to lead the Lady Vandals.

This past Tuesday, Eureka played Battle Mountain in a non-league match and played quite impressively. Eureka won in four games with scores of 25-23 Eureka, 17-25 Battle Mountain, 25-14 Eureka, and 25-17 Eureka. The win was quite impressive as Battle Mountain is a bigger school and plays in a higher division.

“The team played really well and our team refused to give up and came away with a win,” Benson said. She went on to add, “The team played great defense, and every girl that plays back row had at least 10 digs with Bridgette Bacon and Cassie Fitzwater leading with 13 and 12 digs respectively.” Jiselle Dominguez had seven solo blocks at the net while Elsie Etchegary and Fitzwater led offensively with seven and six kills respectively to help Eureka pull out the big win.

The Lady Vandals will head into their next league match against Carlin at 3-1 in league with some great momentum from the past few victories.