The University of Wyoming volleyball team improved their all-time and Mountain West records to 4-0 by beating the New Mexico Lobos with three sets on Saturday mornings 25-14, 25-18, 26-24.
Wyoming’s attack was led by Jackie McBride, who had eight kills and five blocks. Junior KC McMahon had a team with nine kills and two blocks, and Senior Faith Waitsman had eight kills and two blocks.
The win was the Cowgirls’ third win in a row in three sets. The previous two were against the Lobos on Friday night and the state of Utah on February 6.
UW’s 4-0 start in the MW game is the best conference start in the eight seasons that Chad Callihan served as UW’s coach. The last time the Cowgirls started conference play 4-0 was in 1998 as a member of the Western Athletic Conference Mountain Division.
McBride entered the Games that weekend with 417 career blocks. She added 10 against the Lobos to upgrade her career to 427 and moved up to 7th in UW history. She passed Katie Donahue, who had 419 career blocks from 1984 to 1988.
“It’s nice to have everyone work out a role for themselves, and it’s nice to spell some kids,” Callihan said. “Injuries made us play a few kids that we didn’t want to play that often. All of a sudden there was a lot of moving parts for a while, and I don’t think that’s what made us crispy. But it was nice to see these kids have some time and some of them are playing pretty well. It gives us something to build on as we move forward. “
As a team, the Cowgirls had a much more effective attack than the Lobos, recording a hit percentage of 0.215 with 37 kills and only 14 attack errors. New Mexico had a hit percentage of just 0.62 with 31 kills and 24 errors. UW also had the advantage in blocks 11-7.
“It’s been over a calendar year since we had a game here at home,” said Callihan. “Even though we are in a situation with reduced fan capacity, it’s still nice to see our team come out here and compete.”
The Cowgirls return to the pitch next weekend when they travel to Boise State for games from February 19-20. The next home games for UW will take place from February 26th to 27th in the border war against the state of Colorado.
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