All three sets were close, but No. 7 Azusa Pacific (20-4, 7-2 GSAC) left Murchison Gymnasium on Tuesday evening with a three-game Golden State Athletic Conference sweep (25-21, 25-23, 25-22) of Westmont Volleyball (5-12, 3-6).
“If a couple of players had had a great night, we could have extended that match,” said Westmont head coach Patti Cook. “APU’s defense did a good job of shutting down our hitters, however, they did not shutdown Kayta (Goyich). I was proud of the way she kept on hammering the ball. She has a heavy arm and she was able to turn it on tonight.”
Goyich, a right-side hitter, tallied nine kills and posted a .368 attack percentage for the Warriors. Madison Serrano led Westmont with 10 kills and also tallied 24 serve receptions.
Among the challenges for the Warriors in tonight’s match was an obvious height advantage for the Cougars, including starter middle blocker Christy Chan at 6-4 and right-side hitter Whittany Radcliffe at 6-1.
“The way we tried to deal with their height was to try not to hit directly at them,” explained Cook. “Our hitters definitely struggled with the height of the block, which made APU’s digging that much better. Our game plan was to try to create splits in the block and our passers made it possible to do that. I thought we executed our game plan well.”
