Aug. 28, 2004
Despite a career high 20 kills and a career high 10 block assists from Jayme Gergen, the No. 12 Georgia Tech volleyball team dropped its second consecutive match of the 2004 season to No. 11 Colorado State in four games, 30-26, 28-30, 30-26, 30-28. With the loss, the Yellow Jackets fall to 0-2 while the Rams improve to 1-1 and claimed third place in the NACWAA Classic.
The Jackets, who were plagued by 16 service errors in the match, showed signs of improvement from last night’s match on both the offensive and defensive side of the game.
“It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that we need to make our serves,” said head coach Bond Shymansky. “It was frustrating for us. Some people might write it off to altitude, but I would write it off to poise, confidence and skill and we need to be better at that. Certainly we would have been in a better position if we had made those serves, but there is no guarantee to that. Colorado State did a nice job of responding some of the pressure and the crowd was great tonight. We made a number of improvements this weekend and the biggest thing is that we got some great experience under our belt. At the same time, we also know what things we can improve on as we head into playing at Wisconsin next weekend.”
Tech’s offense was an improvement last night, posting a .229 percentage in the match, but Colorado State came out on top as they hit .266 in the match. Gergen led the way, hitting .459 on the night, followed by Nikki Kaminskas who posted a .333 percentage on five kills and Lauren Sauer who had 14 kills and a .281 percentage. Also in double figures for the match was Lynnette Moster who had 13 kills. Lindsey Laband improved upon her career high, totaling 53 assists in the match.
Defensively Marisa Aston led the Jackets with 17 digs while Moster followed her with 15. Abby Showers equaled her career high from last night, again recording 14 digs on the evening. At the net, Tech had 14 blocks on the night compared to the Rams nine as Laband posted a career best five blocks, Sauer had five blocks and Laura Kuhn added two.
The Rams were led by Katie Shirley-Cahoon who had a team high 17 kills, followed by Dre Downs who had 16 kills. Defensively, Kristen Karlik had 16 digs.
The Yellow Jackets will return to action Sept. 3 at 6 p.m. when they take on Purdue in the Wisconsin Invitational in Madison, Wisc.
