Georgia State volleyball travels to Appalachian State

By E. Marcel Pourtout, Editor

The Georgia State volleyball team will play its first Sun Belt Conference match of the 2014 campaign on Friday at Appalachian State as part of the Black and Gold Challenge held in Boone, N.C. over this weekend.

Georgia State (2-5) will face the host Mountaineers (8-0) on Friday before facing Maryland (6-0) and Radford (5-2) on Saturday.

“We’ll see a variety of teams,” Panthers’ coach Sally Polhamus said. “Looking at how we adjust to those teams will prepare us for conference play.”

Georgia State is coming off of the Jax Marriott Challenge which took place in Jacksonville on Sept. 5 and 6. The Panthers won their first match against Bethune-Cookman 3-2. “We took a step forward and had a great match from our right side especially Kaylyn Torain who had a lot of kills and really stepped up her game,” Polhamus said.

However, Georgia State fell to North Florida 3-0 and host Jacksonville 3-2 to conclude the event. “We didn’t receive the wins we worked towards,” Polhamus said. “North Florida was an evenly matched team but executed better and we made too many unforced errors. The Jacksonville match could have gone either way but we had some great breakouts from Eliza Zachary and Kitan Ajanaku.”

Zachary was named to the All-Tournament team and has 70 kills with a team-high .348 hitting percentage and 19 blocks. “Eliza’s driven to have this year be a good one for her and this team,’ Polhamus said. “She’s diversified herself as a hitter.”

“We grew a lot as a team towards the end of the event,” Zachary said. “It was exciting to be named to the All-Tournament team but I have to thank Natalia Nieto because she worked hard to get me the ball.”

Nieto has a team-high 176 assists and nine aces for Georgia State.

The Panthers’ offense has been paced by Deidra Bohannon who has a team-high 93 kills along with 65 digs. “She’s a great athlete and playing six rotations for us which is a heavy burden,” Polhamus said. “She’s a smart player and now its about executing what she sees on the court.”

The early tournaments have allowed Georgia State to incorporate different players to the lineup. “Everyday in practice is a competition because the players know that they have to work to get better at their game when the coaches choose the starting lineup,” Polhamus said.

The Black and Gold Challenge will also allow the team to work on improvements.

“We still learning how to play with each other and communicating,” Nieto said. “We need to focus on making everything better and being loyal to each other.”

Here are coach Polhamus’ thoughts on each team in the Challenge with the date and time of the game:

-Appalachian State, Friday Sept. 12: “App. State has three go-to hitters and run a great system on both offense and defense.”

-Maryland, Saturday, Sept. 12: “Maryland is a Big Ten team and brings more physicality than we’ve seen in pre-conference so far.”

-Radford, Saturday, Sept. 12: “Radford is a smaller team but defensive-minded and don’t make a lot of mistakes.”