Game Week Update: CU vs. Shorter Hawks

By: CU Sports Correspondent

31sth March 2024

The Observers’ Columtreal coverage continues with the Ball Busters where the next stop of the team’s season happened to be Rome, Georgia. Previous match is HERE and you can search our archive for all the team’s previous games.

After last week’s loss the Purple and Yellow still led the season by a single point and with this much on the line, the pressure to retain their lead was on with two top tier teams chomping at their tail. From our perspective it seemed that with the team captain Maya Flores returning on court after her injury and plenty of fresh names on the roster that the spirit, motivation and energy should be high for the CU team.

Contrary to the struggles in the last few games, it was apparent that the Ballbusters came to Georgia to take no prisoners from the first whistle. The CU girls grabbed hold of the reins and did not let go, putting any speculation about their young and inexperienced team to bed. Surely they appeared to have no difficulty overcoming their recent loss.

Each of the three sets played was marked by a high performance from the Columtreal squad. We saw a good mix of strong leadership and highly effective frequent changes of tactics. These changes included the players stepping outside of their typical roles to deliver surprise points all along the match, and even though the Hawks seemed to be determined to field everything in their arsenal to put a stop to this runaway, there seemed to be no viable answer to the Ballbusters game.

The charge was led by Captain Flores with her second line counterpart Bethany Grace Cook, one of the recent roster additions. They both drove aggressive play with fast lane rotations and this didn’t allow the Hawks to adjust easily. The onslaught was supported by well known hitter Rachel ‘Rage’ Wesson. Alternating between the two lines brought the Ballbusters to a 3 set win at 25-17, 25-18 and 25-13, confirming that some of the gossip about potentially the team’s changes for this years’ championship is not just speculation.

There are two more matches to go in the regular season. Two more wins needed… The last year’s champions are waiting for the big showdown in just four weeks for the season’s closure.

Set Results by Numbers

Set 1: 25-17

Set 2: 25-18

Set 3: 25-13

Conference Standings After Week 10