Northridge Women Earn a Split in Volleyball

Cal State Northridge outside hitters Patricia Fitzsimmons and Nancy Nicholls took turns putting the ball away Thursday, but the latter effort came too late, leaving the Matadors with a split in the J. M. N. Premier volleyball tournament at Cal State Fullerton.

Fitzsimmons spearheaded a 15-3, 15-7, 15-13 triumph over Eastern Washington, an NCAA Tournament qualifier last season.

Nicholls demonstrated a similarly dominant attack against California, but her efforts--on a sprained ankle--came too late to reverse a 15-11, 15-7, 14-16, 15-11 loss.

The Matadors finish pool play today at 11 a.m. against Baylor, which is 0-2 in the tournament. CSUN needs a victory over Baylor to advance to the eight-team championship bracket tonight.

“If we beat Baylor, that gives us a chance to play the better teams and that’s where we want to be,” said CSUN Coach Walt Ker after its team fell to 4-2 with the split.

Before setting up Nicholls for a series of kills that forced a fourth game against the Golden Bears, CSUN couldn’t generate an offense because it couldn’t handle Cal’s serve.

“Our service return really broke down,” Ker said. “Cal serves well to spots and that affects our passing system. When we get flat passing, it should raise the level of your blocking, attack and defense but the opposite happened to us.”

CSUN fell behind 6-0 in its first game against the Golden Bears, but rallied to make it 9-6. From there, CSUN was competitive, but unable to sustain a scoring streak long enough to catch up.

The Matadors trailed again early in the second game and never recovered. Cal led 9-2 in the third game, but CSUN rallied for the win. In the final game, CSUN trailed, 13-4, before making it respectable.

Cal Coach Dave DeGroot wasn’t surprised by the Matadors’ comeback.

“He (Walt Ker) is a great coach,” DeGroot said. “That’s a team that’ll never give up. All they had to do was get on a serving streak. They will only get better in Division I playing the better teams. We just had a little more power in the middle and the outside tonight.”

The same could be said of CSUN in its match against Eastern Washington, particularly of Fitzsimmons who finished with 13 kills for a 50% attack rate.

“That’s her best attacking by far,” Ker said. “The neat thing is that she picked a smart attack line. Her choices are smarter. She’s becoming a thinking hitter. It’s fun to watch the evolution.”

In the first game of its match with Eastern Washington, CSUN coasted.

After scoring three times on its initial possession, the Eagles did not score again.

Northridge’s offense came in spurts--three consecutive points to tie it 3-3, four more after a single point and a sideout for an 8-3 lead and four consecutive points at the end for the 15-3 final. Left-hander Karen Scholl served aces on two of the last three points to punctuate the Matador effort.

After Eastern Washington gained a 3-2 edge in the second game, CSUN exploded for five consecutive points, including a service ace by Scholl, a kill by Dawn Krenik and a kill, over the middle block, by Fitzsimmons.

A CSUN error gave the Eagles possession, but Northridge won the ball back immediately on a service error. With Shelly Swalec serving, CSUN reeled off four straight for an 11-3 advantage, three of the points coming off Eastern Washington spikes that went out of bounds; the fourth was on Kathleen Dixon’s block.

The Eagles pulled together to make it 11-7, but CSUN answered with four points in a row for the win.

Just when a three-game sweep was starting to look easy, Eastern Washington asserted itself in taking an 8-0 lead in the third game. Five of the points came off Matador errors. Twice, CSUN let kills go that it thought were long only to have them stay in.

Gradually, CSUN worked its way into the match, pulling within four at 8-4.