Weekly Athletic Update for September 16-21, 2002
The All-Star athletic teams were hard at work this weekend with volleyball, cross-country and soccer all participating in competition.
Soccer
Head Soccer and Cross Country Coach Niles Yantchook, had his weekend full as he drove his cross country team up Friday night to get up early and run at Wingate University Saturday morning. The team saw success as it placed sophomore transfer, Natalie Kotula 5th out of 53 runners overall with a time of 20:30. This is Kotula’s 3rd top 5 finish in competition this year. As scheduling would have it, Coach Yantchook found himself relying a lot on assistant coach, Shannon Rossley to man the soccer team up to Columbia Saturday as he finished up with the x-country meet. He meet the team at Columbia College and after strong 90 minutes of intense play, saw the All-Stars fall 0-2 to the Fighting Koalas of Columbia.
“With every game you can see definite improvement and as a coach, that’s exactly what you are looking for,” says Coach Yantchook about his soccer team’s play yesterday.
“We outplayed them, outshot them, outmanned them. Everything possible we did it. We just couldn’t capitalize and put it all together as a team.”
The soccer team will face USCS Wednesday, 5:30 at home. Last season USCS outshot the all-stars by 27 shots so look for the All-Stars to seek revenge come game-time. XC will travel to Franics Marion University for South Carolina Small School’s Championship on the 27th, this Saturday. Race time starts at 9AM.
Volleyball
All-Star Volleyball landed its third win in a row vs. North Greenville College on Saturday at 11:30. This win upped their record fo the season to 10-7 overall.
Game one was no contest for the Lady Crusaders as Converse hit .430 as a team, the strongest percentage of any game this season. The All-Stars jumped out to an early 17-8 lead with junior outside hitter Trish Hess and junior setter Gretchen Williams combining for 9 unanswered service points. It took Converse one full rotation later, but only allowing North Greenville 8 more points, before junior defensive specialist Katie Boyd put the finishing touches on the match with her serve and the All-Stars closed out game one 30-16.
Game two and three were much of the same for Converse as junior middle blocker, Letia Felder, who led all players with 13 kills, put away 6 of those to lead her team to a 30-22 victory in game two. Freshman defensive specialist, Kara Cook, showed her true All-Stars colors when she chalked up 10 digs, the highest of the day for any player. This was the highest total of the season for Cook.
Game three finished with a score much like game one, as the All-Stars pulled away at 9-6 with Cook’s 6-point service run to make the score 15-6. Each All-Star put their own touch on the game and finished 30-13.
“There were definite bright spots about today’s match. Cook filled in Lauren Bower’s place and did what every coach asks for….she stepped up her play to fill the shoes of our best defensive player and did it perfectly. I couldn’t have asked for more.”
Other bright spots for the team were Letia Felder, who had 13-out-of-15 kills with no errors for a .870 hitting percentage. No Converse player hit negative and that led to an overall .420 hitting percentage for the day.
“Our hitting percentage for this match was incredible. To hit .420 against NGC just proves to the team how capable they are of producing a well-run offense effectively.”
Volleyball will travel to Brevard on Tuesday at 7PM and are on the road this weekend as they leave Thursday night to play in an all-day tournament Friday and Saturday at Mount Olive College. The next home match will be October 9th vs. Carson-Newman College at 7PM. That night will be pack-the-place and all students are welcome an encouraged to support the team.