Lobos roll past Cowgirls

Richard Anderson photo
Wyoming players, from left, Jenna Arneson, Lauren Whitney and Samantha Eley wait for the serve against New Mexico Thursday night in the UniWyo Sports Complex.

By Richard Anderson
Wyoming Sports.org

The Wyoming Cowgirls have prided themselves this season as being a little annoying … hanging around and giving more talented teams fits.

Evidently, New Mexico didn’t mind the Cowgirls on Thursday night in the UniWyo Sports Complex, stopping Wyoming in three games. The Lobos, 4-2 in the Mountain West Conference and 14-4 overall, rolled to a 25-20, 25-20 and 25-13 victory.

The loss dropped the Cowgirls to 2-3 and 3-11.

Wyoming head coach Carrie Yerty said this young team needs to be a “pain in somebody’s butt every time they step out on the court, they need to be a bad rash.”

That didn’t happen early against the Lobos.

“I really think our team tonight questioned whether they could play with New Mexico,” Yerty said. “Player for player, athlete for athlete, it just doesn’t matter. It’s all about what your bring every day. Our team is at a point where we’re either going to move forward or we’re going to sit back. I’m really excited to see what happens on Saturday, because we’re training hard, we come in with good attitudes and we have good leadership.

“But when we get on the court and we look across the court and we see the size or we see someone who put’s a nice ball away, we forget that we got that to. We have to be like the chicken pox that itches like nobody’s business. If we can do that and if we can play point for point versus a whole match in the first five minutes, then we will be OK.”

The Cowgirls stayed fairly even with the Lobos for much of the first two sets and even halfway through the third, but poor serving always seemed to be a momentum killer. Wyoming had 13 service errors in the game, including 10 in the first two.

Yerty said the Cowgirls have to be disciplined servers and compared serving to free-throw shooting in basketball.

“You have to go back there and you have to do your routine and then you have to hit it,” she said. “I won’t make an excuse for the serves. I think we had opportunities. In the first two matches we lost by five points and we missed five serves each game. I have to do a better job of getting my team ready to play.”

Wyoming sophomore Dani Bedore led the Cowgirls with 11 kills. Wyoming, however, never really got into a rhythm offensively and hit just .153.

“We just needed to be more aggressive,” Bedore said. “We were tensive."

Lauren Whitney finished with nine kills and Jenna Arneson added eight for Wyoming, with senior setter Tasha Weishahn finishing with 29 assists.

The Lobos were paced by Jeanne Fairchild with 14 kills and New Mexico hit .349 on the night and out-blocked the Cowgirls 14-8.

“It’s my job to prepare the team and we didn’t play like we were prepared tonight and we’re going to go back and we’re going to get better,” Yerty said. “I’m going to train the team a little better and we’re going to be a better serving team Saturday night and we’re going to be more competitive.”

The Cowgirls will return to action Saturday night at 7 p.m. as they host TCU. The Lady Frogs fell to Colorado State in four games Thursday night in Fort Collins.

“We had just had a tough night,” Bedore said. “We’ll be working on it (Friday) and be ready for Saturday,” Bedore said.
---
LOBOS 3, COWGIRLS 0
New Mexico K A D B
Lisa Meeter 6 3 5 3
S. Kwasigroch 0 0 3 0
J. Michaelsen 1 31 8 0
Jeanne Fairchild 14 0 0 2
Taylor Hadfield 4 0 2 1
Anna Lehne 9 0 1 6
Gayle Tripp 0 0 10 0
Rose Morris 5 0 1 2
Allison Buck 0 0 4 0
Team 39 34 41 14
Wyoming K A D B
Dani Bedore 11 0 5 1
Lauren Whitney 9 1 3 0
Tasha Weishahn 0 29 5 3
JennaRae Jester 5 0 0 2
Samantha Eley 3 0 6 0
Jenna Arneson 8 1 2 2
Jessica Kagarise 0 1 4 0
Carissa Lee 0 1 3 0
Team 36 33 28 8
New Mexico 25 25 25 -- 3
Wyoming 20 20 13 -- 0
Attendance -- 425. Time: 1:19. Referees: Kim Pickering, Ed Halik.