Garden City falls to Eastern Wyoming on opening night

Garden City, KS-Chalk it up to season-opening jitters, but whatever the case, miscues haunted Garden City all night.  

Una Stepic recorded 11 kills, Siala Unufe had four kills and two blocks, and Eastern Wyoming beat Garden City in four sets 16-25, 25-22, 17-25, 20-25 in their regular-season opener at Conestoga Arena.  

The story of this match was miscues, more specifically service errors with Garden City committing 13 rally-killing mistakes.  

"There were times that we looked really good, but you can't continuously hurt yourselves with errors," Head Coach, Jacob Sander said afterwards.  

The Broncbusters had four service errors in the opening set, which only exacerbated their poor start. Garden City was down 6-2 less than three minutes into the match after Stepic hammered home a crosscourt kill. The Lancers eventually built the lead to as many as 11 before a Carly Lang attack error ended the frame.  

"There were some positives to take away, but mostly we have a lot to clean up," Sander added.  

In the second, Garden City erased a four-point deficit midway through. Andrea Djordjevic blocked a Lancer attack, Julia Brazil, who was dealing with a nagging foot injury all night, tapped one over the net; then powered home a kill before Djordjevic's spike gave the Broncbusters a 22-21 lead. Panola transfer, Camila Pereira added a kill, and the Broncbusters evened the match. 

After Eastern Wyoming closed the fourth set on a 12-5 run to win by eight, the Broncbusters responded with a 16-9 surge of their own in the fourth to climb out of a seven-point hole and tie things up at 19. But a slew of mistakes cost Sander's team dearly. Miscevic's serve landed two feet out of bounds, Kinnley Flower followed with another service error, and the Lancers scored six of the final seven points to close it out.  

Brazil paced the Broncbusters with 16 kills but committed eight errors. Vitoria Stedile had 30 digs, and Vitoria Reis and Flower combined for 36 assists.