Barton Volleyball prevails in five, snaps eight year drought in Hutchinson #GoBarton

The Barton Community College volleyball team ended an eight year drought Monday evening, notching their first win inside the Hutchinson Sports Arena since September 12th, 2011, by topping Hutchinson Community College in a five set thriller 23-25, 25-23, 26-24, 19-25, and 15-6.

The Cougars improve to 2-0 in the Jayhawk West and 9-4 overall, dropping the Blue Dragons to 3-2 in league play and 4-5 on the season. Barton returns home for another key Jayhawk West tilt as No. 4 ranked Seward County Community College comes to town Saturday afternoon for a 2:00 p.m. first serve at the Barton Gym.

A 3-0 run out of the gates gave Hutchinson some breathing space in the first set before Barton would rally back scoring nine of the next 10 points gaining the Cougars their largest lead in the opening frame 9-4. Tied at 19 late, the Blue Dragons used three-straight double blocks taking the lead for good win the opener 25-23.

Feeling as if they let the opening set slip through their grasp, Barton jumped out early in the second taking a 11-8 lead before five straight Hutchinson points forced a Cougar timeout. Out of the timeout, Barton went on an 8-1 tear to carry the momentum in evening the match up by the same 25-23 set score.

The Cougars rode the momentum into the third, jumping ahead 8-4 before stretching the gap to five halfway through the set at 20-15. Hutchinson fired back in setting up set point 24-23 but the Cougars fought off the adversity scoring the final three points for the 26-24 win in taking 2-1 match lead.

Once again the Cougars jumped ahead early in the fourth 11-10, but poor ball handling gave new life to the Blue Dragons as Hutchinson rallied with a 9-3 run and winning six of the final eight points to force a deciding fifth set by a 25-19 score.

Back-to-back Eduarda Souza kills set the tone in the fifth as the Cougars leapt ahead 6-1 and never looked back in cruising to a 15-6 victory.

Barton attacked at just a .118 clip led by Migle Mazurkeviciute's team high 19 kills and Mackenzie Pease' team high .285 percentage with Agnieska Paskevic keying the offense with a career high 52 assists. Rayanne de Oliveira accounted for four of Barton's eleven blocks, to go along with, Souza in putting down eleven kills each. Mazurkeviciute added seventeen digs for her sixth double-double of the season with Karina de Oliveira back to full health in recording forty-six digs.