The Emporia State women’s volleyball team emerged victorious over the Lindenwood Lions on Saturday afternoon at William L. White Civic Audotorium.  The Hornets won the first game 25-14. The Lions did come back to win the second game 25-22, but Emporia came back to win the last two games 25-15, and 25-23. That was the Hornet’s first volleyball win after six weeks of losses on the road.

With their victory, the team believes that they have reached a good turn around point.

“I see a lot of improvement in the team despite a rough start to the season,” said Bing Xu, head volleyball coach. “I even saw it last week, despite our loss last week to Central Missouri, but today we showed up, came back together as a team, and won. They came well prepared, focused, and they came out on top.”

In their second game against the Lions, the Hornets were down by seven points at one point, but the team came back to only lose that game by two points.

Xu said that the team kept their confidence while they were tied one game to one with Lindenwood. They applied more pressure on the Lions to win the other two games.

“I see so much potential in this team after today’s win,” Xu said. “They are keeping their confidence and beginning to apply what we do in practice to the game,.”

The Hornet volleyball team felt the same confidence as their head coach after their performance last Saturday afternoon. 

“Being tough at the net and executing good defense was a factor in our first conference win,” said Carly Spicer, senior elementary education major and middle hitter for the Hornets. “But the key component in our victory was coming together as a team despite our tough losses during the past few weeks.”

Spicer scored a total of 37 points in all four games against the Lindenwood Lions, which added up to an average of 9.25 points per game.

“This game will spark many victories to come and we hope to accomplish that against Missouri Southern and Central Oklahoma,” Spicer said. “We’re ready and excited for another home game.”

Shayla Cotman, sophomore right side, also had comments to make regarding the team’s comradery on Saturday.

“Despite the losses we had in the past few weeks, we still stayed together as a team,” Cotman, an elementary education major, said. “During the games, we were talking more with each other instead of staying quiet and keeping things to ourselves. We kept good communication.”

Cotman had a total of nine blocks in all four games and scored a total of 14 points.

“We have a whole week of practice and upcoming home games,” Cotman said. “As long as we stay focused going into our upcoming games, things will turn.”

Volleyball is back in action at 7 p.m. tomorrow at White Auditorium.