ARCATA, Calif. – The Humboldt State volleyball team has enjoyed the return to campus. The Lumberjacks (9-10, 7-8) have won the first three matches during this home stretch, after defeating Cal State East Bay (2-13, 4-19) in straight sets (25-15, 26-24, 26-24) on Thursday night.
"I felt like we serve/received really poorly tonight, and that is typically one of our strengths," said Head Coach
Kelly Wood. "Tonight we were really struggling passing the ball, but when it came down to the wire we just kept battling.
Kaitlyn Dunaway came up big for us with a couple of big digs down the stretch."
In the opening set, the Jacks used a 9-1 run to take the lead back from East Bay after falling behind, 4-5. HSU never surrendered the lead and it grew to a match-high 10 points thanks to a 4-0 set finish with
Jessica Lammers at the service line. The Green and Gold had an impressive .440 hitting percentage in the opening game.
The second and third sets were very similar in that they both needed extra points to be decided. In the second set, no team was able to grow a lead greater than three points, and it took one of
Symone Hayden's team-high 17 kills to cap off the victory.
The Jacks found themselves down as much as six points, on three different occasions, in the final game, but did not panic. Benefitting from 19 kills in the set, Humboldt fought back into it and eventually knotted things up at 21-21. After trading the next two points, the Jacks closed out the match with four of the final five points, three of which were courtesy of Hayden kills.
"Every single match is really crucial for us right now," said Wood. "We are not in a secure position, so we need to win at home. It wasn't pretty tonight, but we got the 'W' and we'll be ready for Saturday."
The match was also the annual "Dig Pink" game to raise breast cancer awareness. Players wore pregame shirts and pink accessories throughout the match.
HSU returns to Lumberjack Arena on Saturday night for a Halloween night showdown with San Francisco State. The match is scheduled to begin at 7 p.m.
