Team Freedom came out fired up to have their injured outside hitters back for the playoffs, with #3 Josue Castillo scoring the first two points of the match. Stingers rallied with consecutive kills by #9 Jorge Mencia and a Setter dump by Leo Durkin, taking their first lead at 4-3. At 12-11, Freedom’s Matt Seifert scored on a service ace and tied the game at 12-12. But the Stingers came back fast with a mini-run with a kill from Mencia, hitting errors by Team Freedom, and a block by #17 Cory Metcalf, taking a lead of 16-12 at the media timeout. Team Freedom battled back with kills by #9 Christopher Vaughn and Castillo, a block by #11 Mikheil Hoyte, and a service ace by Vaughn, bringing about a tie at 18-18. After Stingers #24, Alex Shmelev tied the score at 20-20. Team Freedom retook the lead on a kill by Seifert 21-20 and kept the 1-point lead until Stingers tied 25-25 with another great block by Mencia. At 26-26, Stingers scored consecutive points with kills from Mencia and #15 Inovel Romero and won the set 28-26.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Team Freedom started set #2 with a 3-0 lead from a Stingers’ service error and two blocks from Seifert and Castillo. Stingers rallied and tied the score 5-5 from a combination of Team Freedom hitting errors and kill by Mencia. Then the Stingers started a run on two Team Freedom hitting errors, Langlois service ace, Metcalf block, another Langlois service ace, kill by Mencia, another block by Metcalf, and a Team Freedom hitting error and took a 7-point lead at 12-5. Coach Justin Beaumont substituted Vaughn with #8 Besmir Arsiani and #20 Joe Norman with #6 Doug Dzema. Stingers increased their lead to 18-8 from Team Freedom hitting errors, responding with kills by Metcalf, service ace by Langlois, and kill by Shmelev. Team Freedom sided out well the rest of the set with a block by Siefert, kills by Norman and Hoyte but coming up just short in the end. Stingers closed out the set with a Durkin service ace, kills by Langlois and Fa’agata, winning on a Team Freedom hitting error at 25-13.<\/span><\/p>\n

In set #3, Team Freedom started the set with their original starting lineup and retook the early lead of 6-3 on kills by Vaughn and Hoyte. But after Elias injured his knee, Coach Beaumont had to substitute him with #14 Kenny Ryan. The Stingers tied the set at 6-6 on kills by Metcalf, Langlois, and Shmelev. At 8-8, Freedom scored back-to-back points on a block by Hoyte and a kill by Castillo to lead 10-8. Stingers then took the lead at 12-11 after a block by Langlois. With the score tied at 14-14, Stingers took a 2-point lead of 16-14at the media timeout on a kill by Mencia and Team Freedom hitting error. Stingers increased the lead to 20-17 on a Fa’agata dump kill into the back corner, kept the 3-point lead, and closed the match on a kill by Mencia and Shmelev 25-22.<\/span><\/p>\n

To watch the replay of the match, head on over to the NVA USA\u2019s page on Youtube! <\/span>https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=rdB30nvjjhg<\/span><\/a>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Match Statistics\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n

Utah Stingers:<\/span><\/p>\n

#9 Jorge Mencia \u2013 16 Points (14 Kills, 1 Ace, 1 Block)<\/span><\/p>\n

#10 Jake Langlois\u00a0\u2013 11 Points (9 Kills, 2 Aces)<\/span><\/p>\n

#24 Alex Shmelev \u2013 9 Points (8 Kills, 1 Block)<\/span><\/p>\n

#8 Storm Fa’agata-Tufuga \u2013 5 Points (5 Kills)<\/span><\/p>\n

#17 Cory Metcalf \u2013 6 Points (2 Kills, 4 Blocks)<\/span><\/p>\n

Team Freedom:\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

#9 Christopher Vaughn \u2013 9 Points (8 Kills, 1 Ace)<\/span><\/p>\n

#11 Mikheil Hoyte \u2013 8 Points (7 Kills, 1 Block)<\/span><\/p>\n

#3 Josue Castillo \u2013 6 Points (6 Attacks)<\/span><\/p>\n

#12 Matt Seifert \u2013 10 Points (6 Kills, 3 Blocks, 1 Ace)<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n
• NVA Staff Writer<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

   <\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  Team Freedom came out fired up to have their injured outside hitters back for the playoffs, with #3 Josue Castillo scoring the first two points of the match. Stingers rallied with consecutive kills by #9 Jorge Mencia and a Setter dump by Leo Durkin, taking their first lead at 4-3. At 12-11, Freedom’s Matt Seifert scored on a service ace and tied the game at 12-12. But the Stingers came back fast with a mini-run with a kill from Mencia, hitting errors by Team Freedom, and a block by #17 Cory Metcalf, taking a lead of 16-12 at the media timeout.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2699,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":""},"categories":[22,19],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/stingers.nvausa.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/04\/Leo1920x1200.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stingers.nvausa.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2761"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stingers.nvausa.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stingers.nvausa.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stingers.nvausa.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stingers.nvausa.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2761"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stingers.nvausa.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2761\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2762,"href":"https:\/\/stingers.nvausa.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2761\/revisions\/2762"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stingers.nvausa.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2699"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stingers.nvausa.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2761"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stingers.nvausa.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2761"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stingers.nvausa.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2761"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}