Multiple Motivators Lift Cats Past Cards on Friday
It didn’t take much for the Kentucky volleyball team to get motivated on Friday. After all, the Cats had dropped consecutive home matches, both in five sets, within the last week.
If that wasn’t enough, the Cats were hosting archrival Louisville, who happened to be ranked 25th in the country in the latest AVCA poll.
The combination of those factors helped 16th-ranked Kentucky to a sweep of Louisville 25-15, 25-14, 25-21 in just 90 minutes on Friday night at Memorial Coliseum.
For senior Leah Edmond, who led everyone with 15 kills in the match, the two motivating factors equally drove her on Friday.
“It was a combination of the two,” Edmond said. “Louisville already gets you excited, but I know that after the two losses, we knew we had to win one at home.”
Friday was Edmond’s final regular season match against the archrival Cards, which provided the Lexington native with all of the motivation she needed. It was also the fourth straight year that Edmond’s Cats had swept the Cards.
“So exciting,” Edmond said following the win. “I get to add my name to all of the people who have yet to lose to Louisville, which I think is a big accomplishment, especially being from Lexington.”
For graduate transfer Leah Meyer, who had 10 kills of her own and hit .614 in Friday’s victory, this was her first taste of the matchup between the Bluegrass rivals. Meyer knew that facing the Cards, as well as trying to bounce back from a pair of setbacks, would play a role in Friday’s match.
“We’ve had a couple of tough losses, in five, the last couple of games,” Meyer said. “And that fueled us a little bit more for this one. And, of course, it’s Louisville and who doesn’t love a rivalry game.”
Kentucky handled the first set with relative ease behind big efforts from Edmond and Meyer. After trailing early in the second set, the Cats assembled a 15-3 run, including the last eight points of the set, to win 25-14.
The third set started in similar fashion, with the Cards grabbing an early 7-5 lead before Kentucky took control. The Cats won five straight points to establish a three-point advantage. Louisville would get within a point, 20-19, before Kentucky scored five of the last seven points to finish the match.
After Wednesday’s loss to Purdue, UK head coach Craig Skinner was looking for a more balanced effort from his team on Friday. He got just that in Friday’s win. In addition to the 15 kills from Edmond and the 10 from Meyer, the Cats also got nine kills from sophomore Alli Stumler, six from junior Kendyl Paris and five from senior Caitlyn Cooper.
“You have to be balanced to beat good teams,” Skinner said. “Like any sport, if you go through just one person, it’s hard to win consistently. If you can go through five people, you have a much better time each time you play.”
Skinner also knew that the losses to Purdue and Indiana would motivate his Cats.
“I think when you feel the other side of victory a couple of times in a row, you find the burning desire to compete,” Skinner said. “When you feel like you do for a couple of days after not playing your best, you dig deep.”
With Friday’s win, Kentucky took one “M” word, motivation, and turned it into another “M” word, momentum, which is just what the Cats needed as SEC play begins this week.
