Peter Dindinger — NMMI Sports Press
SNYDER, Texas — In their Western Junior College Athletic Conference opener, the New Mexico Military Institute Bronco volleyball team swept the Western Texas College Westerners, 25-13, 25-21, 25-18, Wednesday afternoon at The Coliseum.
"Honestly, it's just good to get a win under our belts in conference," said NMMI head coach Shelby Forchtner. "The ultimate goal is to try to win as many games as we possibly can. This is just the first step in that direction."
The opening game started off with the Broncos (8-5 overall, 1-0 WJCAC) scoring seven unanswered points before Western Texas got on the board.
Julia Johnson had a kill to help increase NMMI's lead to 12-1.
Everything seemed to be going the Broncos' way as they extended the lead to 10 points.
Vittoria Price dealt a kill late in the game to make the score 23-12 before the Broncos eventually closed out the game with a 12-point victory.
The Westerners engaged NMMI with five ties in the score during the second game.
After the Broncos started off on a 3-0 run the momentum shifted back and forth between each team until NMMI pulled away with a 16-13 in the middle of the set.
Western Texas (3-6, 1-1) later tied the game twice more before the Broncos regained the lead to take the set by four points.
In the final game, there were four early ties in the scoring column and two lead changes.
NMMI went on a 3-0 run and began to establish a cushion after Marian Ovalle came away with a kill to extend her teams lead to five.
The Westerners chipped away at the deficit to trail by three but the Broncos kept their composure to gain a seven-point lead.
"We told them from the very beginning that we were gonna try to keep them out of system as much as possible," Forchtner said. "I feel like even in the second and third set we did a pretty good job of that. That's the one thing that kind of kept us in charge of the second set because we were still serving pretty tough and kept them out of system."
Johnson led the way with 10 kills and 13 digs while Price chipped in with nine kills and a solo block.
Katarzyna Niderla added with seven kills and Darcy Dodd had six.
Ovalle and Heleine Filipe each tallied five kills apiece.
Defensively, Kristijana Istuk had 18 digs while Ovalle recorded 11. Tiffinay Gauspohl came away with 10.
NMMI travels to Midland College for a 2 p.m. CST match at the Physical Education Building on Saturday, Feb. 20.