After clawing back from a 2-0 deficit and winning 3-2 against Snow College Thursday, the 16th-ranked North Idaho College volleyball team found itself down 2-1 against the seventh-ranked Salt Lake Community College Lady Bruins Saturday. This time, the Lady Cardinals couldn’t pull off the comeback, and fell 3-1 to their Scenic West Athletic Conference rival at Christianson Gymnasium.
“I think we have a really bad habit of being the comeback team on the court,” NIC sophomore Russia Robinson said. “When we’re ahead and we jump on a team, we do really good and we stay on them, but when a team comes out and we’re the team that’s playing catch up, it’s really hard for us to come back, and I think it’s a mental thing.”
The Lady Cardinals won the first set 25-18 but then proceeded to lose the next three 25-23, 25-23 and 27-25.
“Losing’s always hard, but it’s stuff like this that makes a victory more sweet when you do get it,” freshman setter Maddi Seidl said.
After a back and forth match in the first set, NIC gained a four-point advantage, 16-12, before Salt Lake coach Sue Dulaney called a timeout. The timeout wasn’t able to slow NIC’s sudden momentum though as the Lady Cardinals won the first set.
In the second set, NIC climbed back to tie the game at 20 and tied it again at 23 but Salt Lake took the next two points for the win.
“The first game was pretty clean and then the second game we just started making unforced errors,” NIC head coach Miles Kydd said. “I think some of it’s players understanding that they’re good enough in that situation, that they don’t need to do anything different.”
With the match tied at one, Salt Lake took a 7-2 lead in the third set before Kydd called a timeout. The Lady Cardinals climbed back to within two points to make the score 13-11, and clawed further back into the game to bring the score to 18-17. After a Salt Lake timeout, the Lady Cardinals tied it at 18 and took a 19-18 lead on the next play. Salt Lake eventually regained the lead and held NIC off.
NIC took an 18-15 lead after a back and forth fourth set in which neither team took control. Salt Lake then took a 21-20 lead and after a timeout, NIC tied it at 21 and took back the lead 22-21. The Lady Bruins tied the game at 24 and took the lead again on the next play, but NIC tied it at 25. Salt Lake managed to take the next two points to win the game and the match.
Sophomore Leeta Grap led NIC in kills.
Kydd said Grap is one of the top left side players he’s coached in 30 years, and he has coached at Eastern Washington University and Canada’s national volleyball team. “She has that much ability,” Kydd said.
