By McCall Knowlton
The No. 20 BYU women?s volleyball team beat Utah Wednesday night in four games at the Elaine Michaelis Court to move to 10-0 on the season. BYU had not beat Utah since Sept. 20, 2001 giving up ten straight matches to the Utes.
?That?s enough, its time for this streak to end,? BYU head coach Jason Watson said.
It was an emotional match with BYU?s greatest in-state rival, because no one on the current BYU squad had ever beaten a Utah team.
?We fought and battled every time and finally came out on top,? BYU senior setter Lauren Richards Evans said.
BYU lost Game 1 (24-30) and was down late in Game 2 (23-26) with Utah rallying when Watson called a time out.
Watson said he didn?t give the team any technical coaching tips, but helped them refocus on their goal of winning the match.
Middle blocker, Lindsy Hartsock, came out of the break and had three straight kills to change the momentum for the Cougars, who went on a 7-0 run and won the game 30-26.
Hartsock, named the Collegiate Volleyball Update National Player of the Week Sept. 19-25, had 13 kills on the match and scored 16 of the Cougars? points. BYU Sophomore outside hitter, Chelsea Goodman, had a career high 15 digs and a match high 17 kills to record her third straight double-double performance. Goodman and outside hitter Erica Lott have both scored double-digit kills in every game this season.
At the break time between Game 2 and 3 Coach Watson wrote ?NO MORE!? on the board and encouraged his team to stick to their goal of beating all of the in-state teams Lott said.
?We wanted to win the long rallies and wanted to do what it takes,? Lott said. ?None of us ever panic.?
The Cougars came out and won Game 3 (30-24) and Game 4 (30-25), with Lott scoring the winning point in both matches. Led by Hartsock with six blocks the Cougars out blocked the Utes 14 to 12 and also had less service errors than Utah. BYU is the first to team all season to have more blocks than the Utes in a match.
?Utah is a good blocking team, and to out block Utah is quite an accomplishment,? Watson said.
Utah is the defending Mountain West Conference Champion, but graduated five seniors from last year?s squad and has a very young team, Utah head coach Beth Launiere said.
The Utes were led by outside hitter, Shelly Sommerfeldt who had 16 kills in the match to go achieve the 1,000-career kill mark. She is only the 9th player in University of Utah history to reach this mark. Sommerfeldt took 45 swings during the match against BYU and came up with 16 kills.
BYU will face the MWC?s newest member TCU (10-4) Friday at 7 p.m. in the Smith Fieldhouse.
