Nathan Forest
nforest@uwyo.edu
The UW Cowgirls swept the San Diego State Aztecs on Saturday at the UniWyo Sports Complex in three straight sets in their return from a long string of road games.
With this win the Cowgirls move to 18-6 on the season and 8-4 in the Mountain West conference. San Diego State will drop to 7-18 overall and 4-8 in the Mountain West.
The first set was hotly contested, with few leads over two along with 10 tie scores and five lead changes. The Cowgirls pulled out late to a 20-15 lead and held on to finish the set 25-19.
The Cowgirls jumped out to an impressive lead early in the second set at 20-6. But San Diego State put together a remarkable rally and fought back to within three point, but the Cowgirls prevailed, winning 25-22.
“I think we came back from set two pretty well,” senior Bridget Shanahan said. “We could have completely crumbled and lost our composure in set three and just let them back into the match.”
In the third set, the Cowgirls got out to another good start at 7-1, and held it for most of the match. The Cowgirls won 25-22.
Bridget ‘Nuke’ Shanahan led the Cowgirl offense with 12.5 points on the night.
Freshman Mattison DeGarmo had an outstanding game and scored nine points for the Cowgirls as well as assisting in four blocks. Freshman Reed Copeland is also making waves with two solo blocks, four assisted blocks and seven points.
“Freshmen, you never know what you’re going to get from night to night but I thought that they did a really good job,” head coach Chad Callihan said. “It helped take some of the pressure off of our older kids.”
The Cowgirls finished the game with 14 blocks to the Aztecs nine. The Cowgirls also served a perfect game with no service errors and four service aces, half coming from Lily Austin.
Allison Waldvogel was a defensive mainstay with 11 digs. Cori Aafedt had seven digs as well as 12 assists and Coutney Chacon led the team in assists with 17.
Deja Harris led the Aztec offense with 13.5 points on the game in addition to her seven assisted blocks. Baylee Little followed her with 8.5 points.
Hailey Jones helped out the Aztec offense with 19 assists, and Lauren Utchen followed with 11.
The Cowgirls next game is on Thursday Nov. 5 at 7 p.m. when they take on New Mexico in Albuquerque.
