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Roadrunners win 9th straight as powerhouse looms
'Diggers a speedbump on road to Kearney RMAC tourney glory
By Eric Lansing
lansing@mscd.edu

The Roadrunners’ volleyball team kept their dream of hosting the upcoming Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference tournament alive by squeezing out another five-game victory against the Orediggers (11-15, 7-10 RMAC) Oct. 20 at the Colorado School of Mines in Golden.

Metro is still in the running for first place in the Eastern Division with final scores of 28-30, 30-23, 30-17, 25-30 and 15-10.

Next on Metro’s schedule is national powerhouse Nebraska-Kearney and the Oct. 20 was a perfect opportunity for Mines to steal one from the ’Runners.

Although it took the full five games, the Roadrunners’ focus seems to be intact, and head coach Debbie Hendricks gives credit to the Orediggers for making her team work to regain some of that focus.

“While I think we gained a lot of confidence, I don’t think we’re over confident.” Hendricks said. “Mines always gives us a great match. It doesn’t matter what they’ve done a week before or all season. They just come at us hard, especially in (Volk Gymnasium).”

Mines came on tough in game one by scoring the first four points on timely kills. Metro rallied to tie the game at nine before taking the next three points and the temporary lead off of middle blocker Megan Wittenburg’s kill and two attack errors by the ’Diggers.

Mines charged back by reeling off the next nine of 11 points to take a 25-24 lead. Metro took a timeout to slow down the ’Diggers momentum but instead gave them a breather as they went on to take the next two points and take game one by a score of 30-28.

Outside hitter Julie Green took it upon herself to even the match by throwing down six kills in a 30-23 win.

After both teams split the next two games, it was on to game five where the ’Runners raised the level of urgency and finished with great confidence.

“Once again we showed great composure in that fifth game,” Hendricks said. “We got a little rattled and made too many errors in that fourth game. It’s getting to be very small phases of the game, and we’re really getting that cleaned up.”

Game five saw Green pound out four kills, and Metro took advantage of four Mines errors to take the game 15-10 and the match 3-2.

Green, who had a game-high 24 kills, says winning in five games shows the team can get it done, but they still need to improve.

“It shows that we need to work on little tidbits, so we will probably practice on that all week so we can go into Kearney and kick some butt,” Green said. “We have not beaten them since I’ve been a freshman, and we’ve played them a lot. We are all ready to go over there and give it our all.”

The Roadrunners (15-8, 12-4 RMAC) visit Nebraska for the weekend as they take on RMAC East-leading Nebraska-Kearney (23-6,14-3 RMAC) Oct. 27 and Chadron State (2-27, 1-16 RMAC) Oct. 28.

“It’s a two-match weekend,” defensive specialist Amy Watanabe said. “We can’t take Chadron lightly, because they have been taking teams to four and five games. (Hendricks) doesn’t want us to focus on just Kearney … we need to focus on Chadron as well.”