On Sept. 23 the California Lutheran University Regals silenced the roar of the Chapman Panthers defeating them 3-0. The Regals have been undefeated in the Southern California Intercollegiate Conference so far defeating Redlands and Whittier.

“We wanted to come in here and be confident and play CLU volleyball and focus on what we’ve been working on during practice,” sophomore libero CJ O’Brien said. 

The Regals started the first set off strong and took the lead after nine serves. The Regals went on to have a 12-0 run to make the score 17-4 in favor of the home team. The lead proved to be too much for the Panthers to overcome and they lost the first set 25-11.

The first set gave the Regals some momentum to keep moving forward.

“[It] showed us we were ready to play and gave us a lot of confidence going into the next set,” O’Brien said.

The second set was a promising start for the Regals as they took the lead 10-7, the Panthers refused to give up and returned with a three-point lead.  Even with the Panther’s greatest efforts, the Regals tied the set at 16. Each team earned five more points but the Regals earned the last three points in order to secure the win for the second set at 25-21.

Even though the second set proved to be more difficult, the Regals continued to play hard.

“We have a team motto called ‘hold the rope’ and ‘together’ as well as ‘believe’…so in those tight situations we can look to each other and keep playing as hard as we can,” sophomore outside hitter Amanda Roberts said.

The final set began with Chapman taking the early lead and the Regals fighting for every point to take the lead. Neither team could hold on to the lead for more than two points. Finally, the Regals finished the set 25-21. 

Michelle Lawrence led the team with 13 kills and had a kill percentage of .500. Hope Stewart followed with 11 kills and a kill percentage of .261. The Regals had 44 kills while the Panthers only had 26. Overall, the Regals finished with a kill percentage of .280 while the Panthers finished with a kill percentage of .072 which showed the Regal offense dominated the Panther’s.

Defensively, the Regals dominated at the nets with 13 blocks causing the Panthers to have 19 errors. Sarah Pappas led the team with blocks at three, Lawrence was the only player of the game to have a blocking error. Nicki Tetherow had 16 digs, the match high, to limit the Panther’s kill attempts.

The Panthers were led in kills by Eve Silverman who had seven kills and a kill percentage of .036. The team’s overall kill percentage was .072 which paled in comparison the the Regal’s .280 kill percentage.

The players are trying to maintain their success from last season and extend it into this upcoming season.

“We really wanted to take each game one step at a time. We had a successful season last year and we’ve done pretty well this year but I think what we’ve done well was taking each one game at a time,” Roberts said.

Head Coach Kellee Roesel has coached the Regals for 10 years and coached her team to the first NCAA Division III Championship in Cal Lutheran history in 2015. So she had high expectations for this upcoming season.

“Expect them to work hard and get better every day,” Roesel said.

The Regals will host their next game in Gilbert Arena at 7 p.m. Sept. 27 against the Occidental Tigers.

Anissa Frajio
Staff Writer