5/20/04

Texas wins first match in Europe, 3-1

	Bethany Howden

ROME – The Texas volleyball team arrived in Italy on Wednesday, May 19 and got to the business of playing its first match on Thursday, May 20, defeating A.S. Fidio, a fourth-division squad out of Rome, 3-1 (25-16, 23-25, 25-17, 25-15). Junior Bethany Howden (Austin, Texas) had 15 kills, while freshman Brandy Magee (Mission Viejo, Calif.) had 11. First-semester freshmen Sarah Holloway (Aurora, Colo.) made her Longhorn debut with a team-high 11 digs.

The Longhorns played by international rules, playing games to 25 points instead of 30 and were limited in substitutions.

“This whole trip to Europe is about working on our team chemistry,” UT head coach Jerritt Elliott said after the victory. “On the court, we have seven (of 10) players who have less than one full year’s experience with the team, so we’re trying to work on communication and getting to know how each other plays. The second game was all about the errors we made, but we rebounded well in the third and fourth games and I was pleased with our overall effort and performance. I thought our middle blockers (Magee, Howden, Leticia Armstrong) played very well tonight and stood out.”

With Thursday’s match, three Horns – Holloway,fellow  first-semester freshman Jen Christian (Gilbert, Ariz.) and freshman Leticia Armstrong (Elkhart, Ind.) – played in their first matches as Texas players, while sophomore Dariam Acevedo (Trujillo, Puerto Rico) returned to the line-up after injuring her knee in her second Texas match last September. Three other freshmen – setter Jenny Andrew (Kingswood, Texas), Magee and opposite Jessica Curtis (Marietta, Ga.) – were also on the court, while only sophomore Erin Larson (San Antonio, Texas), Howden and junior Mira Topic (Kastela Kambelovac, Croatia) had more than one full year of experience with the team.

Texas won the first game handily, using a three-point run on Armstrong’s serve to jump out to a 10-7 lead, then sided-out well the rest of the game to take a 1-0 lead.

In the second, the Longhorns managed their largest lead – three points – at 16-13 as their hosts held close to UT. At 23-21 and Topic serving, A.S. Fidio took the next four points to claim the second game and knot the score at 1-1.

Texas recovered and took the next two games to win the match. Tied at 9-9 in game three, Texas ran off a 6-1 run to take control of the game and then used foru-straight points on Magee’s serve to go up 2-1 in the match. In the last game, the Horns moved ahead 10-4, 17-8 and then 21-11 before closing the game and the match on Curtis’s second kill of the match.

Andrew, the team’s only setter on the trip, had 38 assists, while Topic added eight kills and nine digs. Texas had nine blocks in the match, highlighted by Christian (two solo, one block assist) and Magee (three block assists), who had three apiece. Christian also added six kills, while Armstrong had four, and Curtis and Andrew two each.

Texas will remain in Rome until Saturday, May 22 before traveling two hours northeast to the Marche Region of Italy (eastern coast along the Adriatic Sea) to play at least one match there. Other cities the team will visit include Pesaro, Italy, Venice, Italy, Inssbruck, Austria and Munich, Germany before returning stateside on May 30.