CSUN Devours Cal State L.A. in 3 Games

Walt Ker, the Cal State Northridge women’s volleyball coach, held a team meeting last week to stress the importance of staying hungry.

The Lady Matadors were coming off an impressive showing in the National Invitational Volleyball Tournament at UCLA and conference wins over Riverside and Cal State Dominguez Hills.

Ker used the meeting to remind his team not to be content and to help themselves to more wins.

Against Cal State Los Angeles Wednesday night, the Lady Matadors demonstrated that they still had an appetite for victory by fattening up on the Golden Eagles with a 15-13, 15-8, 15-7 win in a California Collegiate Athletic Assn. match at Cal State Los Angeles.

With the win, the Lady Matadors, rated second in the NCAA Division II national rankings, remained unbeaten (6-0) in conference and evened their record at 9-9 overall. Cal State L.A. fell to 1-5 in the CCAA and 5-12 overall.

“We started out a little sluggish and made a lot of unforced errors,” Ker said. “After getting those things straightened out though, things went pretty much as I expected them to.”

Franci Bowman, Angela Brinton and Mary Yackley all played important roles in the match. The Lady Matadors were without two-time All-American Heather Hafner, who was recovering from an abdominal injury, and Karen Lontka, who was nursing a sore foot.

Cal State L.A. jumped out to a 4-0 lead in the first game of the match and had the Lady Matadors down 13-11 until Bowman began serving for Northridge.

Bowman, a freshman from Royal High in Simi Valley who redshirted at the start of the season, served four straight points to give CSUN the first game victory.

CSUN took a 12-3 lead in the second game and Yackley finished off the scoring with one of her 11 kills. The sophomore from Kennedy High also recorded some of her match-high 26 blocks.

In game three, Brinton made the most of her time in place of Shelli Mosby, CSUN’s two-time All-American setter, who sat out the final game.

Brinton began serving with CSUN trailing, 4-3. When she was finished, Brinton had served the Lady Matadors to a 12-4 lead and eventual third-game victory.

“Angela is really one of our top players,” Ker said. “But we play a 5-1 offense with Mosby, who is one of the top players in Division II. If Angela was playing any other position besides setter, she’d probably get in a lot more.”

The win was the Lady Matadors’ final tuneup before heading to Colorado for the weekend. Along with fourth-ranked Cal Poly Pomona, sixth-ranked Riverside and 10th-ranked Chapman, CSUN will compete in the 14-team Air Force Academy Premiere tournament.