Slow starting Glacier sweeps

It took a few minutes to shake off the rust off a quiet week, but the Glacier Wolfpack volleyball team rallied from a slow start to sweep the visiting Missoula Hellgate Knights 25-21, 25-15, 25-11 on Saturday afternoon.

"If you want to be a good team, then learn how to play better throughout a match," said Glacier coach Christy Harkins.

"We did that. I thought we played better, put a little more pressure on Hellgate. I thought Hellgate did some great things defensively and we had to step up our game," she said.

The Wolfpack (8-3, 3-1) missed a couple of serves in the early going, had a tough time passing the ball and also sprinkled in a few hitting errors.

Glacier was never down too much during the first set - the biggest deficit was four points - but it wasn't quite in complete sync, either.

"Missed serves slow the pace of a game down. We do much better when we play at a fast pace, so that's definitely part of it ... and being off since last Saturday. That's a long week of getting back into that competitive fire of playing," Harkins said.

"Plus Saturday afternoons are a different way to play. I think there's a lot of things. We just didn't quite show up fully ready to start the match, for whatever reason ... and I thought Hellgate did. They played great defensive, especially that first game.They touched a lot, took advantage of our errors," she added.

"We started off bad, but we worked our way through it. We couldn't make our serves and we couldn't pass, but eventually we got it to work," said senior setter Paige Latimer.

"We came together and worked our way through it," she said.

"We played better, I thought, toward the end. Our serves at the end were amazing, I thought," Latimer said.

The turnaround came slowly - a kill and a block by freshman middle Cassidy Hashley and an ace by senior Rachel Cutler gave Glacier a 17-16 lead. The teams traded mistakes over the next few points to tie the score at 21.

From there, the mistakes were Hellgate's while the Wolfpack recorded kills. The final point was a tip from Cutler that the Knights picked up, but returned wide.

The second set was tight for awhile - the teams were tied at 11. But three straight kills by Hashley, Kendra Bouley and Lexy Boschee gave the Wolfpack a lead it wouldn't relinquish.

Glacier led from the first serve in the third set - and ended with a string of 10 straight serves (including four aces) by Latimer.

"We just played better.They weren't happy with that performance (in the first set). They want to perform at a high level," she said.

Bouley had five kills in the second set and led all hitters with 10 for the match. Latimer had 31 assists and served seven aces and Cami Mathison led in digs with 11. Hashley finished with two blocks and eight kills.

"For a freshman rising up to that competitive level ... she's getting better every single game," Harkins said of Hashley.

Harkins also complimented Latimer on her work.

"Passing wasn't great in the first set, she wasn't setting great in the first set, but I thought she refocused herself pretty well and was able to run the offense better in sets two and three. I was proud of her for that," the coach said.

"And she did a good job serving at the end, obviously. She served a great string of points," Harkins added.

The Wolfpack is off now until Thursday when it plays host to Missoula Sentinel.

Kills - Hellgate 20 (Gen Newell 9), Glacier 39 (Kendra Bouley 10); Assists - Hellgate 18 (Kate Seaholm 18), Glacier 32 (Paige Latimer 31); Blocks - Hellgate None, Glacier 3 (Cassidy Hashley 2); Digs - Hellgate 24 (Raina Walther 6), Glacier 44 (Cami Mathison 11); Aces - Hellgate 4 (Gen Newell 3), Glacier 16 (Latimer 7).