No. 16 NIC rallies past No. 13 Snow in 5

By JASON ELLIOTT

Sports writer

COEUR d'ALENE - Some teams stop playing down two games in volleyball.

For the 16th-ranked North Idaho Cardinals, they were just getting started on Thursday night.

Sophomore outside hitter Leeta Grap had 17 kills and 10 digs as the Cardinals roared from behind to beat the 13th-ranked Snow Badgers 21-25, 23-25, 25-16, 25-20, 15-10 in a Scenic West Athletic Conference match at Christianson Gym.

Snow (12-6, 0-2 SWAC) took the first two games, taking advantage of 10 errors by the Cardinals (10-5, 3-0) resulting in points.

"If you give a team 15 points, you're not going to win very often," NIC coach Miles Kydd said. "I asked them after the second game how many of them could honestly say they prepared any differently for the first 14 games compared to tonight. When all of them said they'd prepared differently, I told them it was something they didn't need to do and you can't have special prep for special games."

Grap had six kills in the third game to get NIC back into the match.

"I think everyone was kind of nervous with the first home-game jitters and playing in front of the crowd," Grap said. "We said that we needed to play with each other and not do anything special and play our game. I think after coach told us that, we really wanted to prove him wrong. We came out with the attitude that we're not going to let this tip hit the ground and not let anybody else win here."

NIC only had one serving error in the final two games.

"I told them if we really keep playing and let the things come out of us, whoever plays the best in the serve/receive attack was going to win," Kydd said. "Everyone looked comfortable in that in the first two games, but it seemed nobody wanted to play offense."

Freshman Maddi Seidl had 44 assists off the bench for NIC, and frosh reserve Brittany Aldridge added 10 kills and two digs.

"I told Maddi when she went to set Leeta the first five balls," Kydd said. "We didn't really have a hot hitter and don't really have one, but we knew we weren't going to beat them tipping the ball, but just playing powerful. Maddi plays with a lot of energy - not that (starting setter) Allison (Meehan) doesn't, it's just Maddi brings something different and Brittany coming in was instant offense tonight."

Britney Chilcott had 11 kills, Rosie Robinson 22 digs, Larissa Claassen 13 digs for NIC, which hosts seventh-ranked Salt Lake on Saturday at 1 p.m. Salt Lake defeated No. 4 Southern Idaho 25-22, 26-24, 23-25, 25-23 on Thursday night in Twin Falls.

LeeNell Hernandez, Robinson and Claassen had three aces each for NIC.

"I hope we don't think it's something special again," Kydd said. "We don't need to do anything special. They already are a special group, but we just need to relax and go out and play and all the training you've done will show up."

Snow, which lost in four games to visiting Salt Lake last Friday to open conference play, travels to Southern Idaho on Saturday.

"This conference is the best in the nation for volleyball," Snow coach Keven John said. "Easy matches just don't exist. We served a little better in the first two games, but didn't stay in an offensive system the entire night and kind of stopped playing."

Madison Packard had 12 kills, Magen Hunter 33 assists for Snow.

"We've been having some focus issues closing out matches that I thought we fixed," John said. "But NIC did a fine job of closing out the match. They're a good team."