Cougar Volleyball Team Stuck at Seventeen against Reigning Region Champs

The Genesee Community College volleyball team faced their toughest foe yet and suffered their first match without a set win this season against reigning region champion Jamestown Community College at the Zambito Gymnasium Sept. 11.

Jamestown took each set by identical 25-17 scores to improve to 5-0 on the season as the leader in National Junior College Athletic Association's Region III.

The Jayhawks finished No. 7 in the NJCA D-III National Championship last year in Rochester, Minn. and may have finished higher had they not drawn eventual national champion Eastfield (Tx.) in the opening round after securing a national championship tournament berth as Region III champions.

The Cougars showed improvement from last season after suffering a same 3-0 loss to Jamestown around the same date (Sept. 12, 2017), with a dozen more combined set points compared to last season.

The first set may have been the hardest for Genesee to take after securing a five-point lead more than halfway through the match at 16-11. The Jayhawks scored 10 successive points to take the lead at 21-16 before scoring four of the last five to take the set.

In the second set, Genesee went back-and-forth up until the 16th point for each team. At 16-16, another Jayhawk run – this time for seven successive points – put Jamestown ahead 23-16 before they secured two of the final three for the second-set win.

The third-set loss came from a poor start that saw the Cougars trail by eight at 11-3. However, Genesee finished strong by playing Jamestown equal the rest of the way with each team scoring 14 points apiece after the set's initial 14 points.

Ana Carolina Cerezer Pinto had a team-high 15 of the team's 50 digs, while Kaitlyn VanSkiver had three of the team's eight blocks and Sha-Ony Obispa had five of the team's 14 kills.

The Cougars will continue with pod play this weekend in Syracuse by taking on Cayuga, Jefferson and host Onondaga Sept. 15 starting at 10:30 a.m.