The Florida A&M Volleyball team shutout the Lady Tigers of Savannah State University Sunday Oct. 25 at the Al Lawson Center.
The Lady Rattlers got off to a shaky start at the beginning of the best of five match as the girls committed four errors alone winning the first set by just eight points (25-17).
“We started off a little bit nervous by committing a lot of unforced errors during the first part of the first set,” said Head Coach Tony Trifinov. “We then took a timeout and reminded the girls of what we’ve been working on all week which is to take care of the easy balls and eliminating the unforced errors.”
The Lady Rattlers must’ve taken what Coach Trifinov said during the timeout into thought, as they came out in the next set and defeated the Lady Tigers 25-8.
Deija Martin, a junior Middle Blocker from Glenns Ferry, Idaho led the Lady Rattlers in kills as she attributed for nine in the match, along with committing zero errors.
“There’s a gameplan for every game and Coach Trifinov wants to get the middle’s involved so that we can split the blocks, so that our outside hitters have one-on-one with the other team,” Martin said.
The Lady Rattlers kept up the intensity going into what could be the final set of the best of five match, as they were up 2-0 on SSU.
Pamela Soriano, a sophomore Outside Hitter from Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic lit up the Lawson Center adding eight kills, two assists, and 10 digs as she helped lift her Lady Rattler ball club to a 25-11 win in the third set to finish off the Tigers in a 3-0 shutout victory.
With this win, the Lady Rattlers improve their overall record to 6-17 and 6-1 in the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference Southern Division as they’ve now clenched a spot in the MEAC Volleyball Championship.
Going forward, the Lady Rattlers will be on the road next week to take on the Lady Ospreys of the University of North Florida who defeated them 3-0 in Tallahassee, but the Lady Rattlers plan to repay them with an upset on their homecourt.
Following their matchup against UNF, the Lady Rattlers will return home for their final home match of the season against their arch-rival, the Bethune Cookman University Wildcats.
Bethune has already defeated the Lady Rattlers once this season at home (3-0), but Middle Blocker and Outside Hitter, Star Tucker, feels that they will be ready for whatever the Wildcats spike their way.
“We definitely believe that BCU beat us because they were feeding off of their crowd, but their nowhere near as talented as us, so when they get here it’s going to be a different story,” Tucker said.
Bethune is coming off of a 3-1 win over South Carolina State University as they remain undefeated in the MEAC Conference.
Game time is set for Nov. 1 at 3 p.m.