SANTA CLARA, Calif.—The BYU women’s volleyball team easily took down Santa Clara Saturday with a 3-0 (25-11, 25-19, 25-22) sweep in the rematch at the Leavey Center.

“It was a great win for us,” BYU head coach Shawn Olmstead said. “We played a solid match. We came out playing our game and kept the pace going. The girls did a great job.”

Opposite hitter Jennifer Hamson threw down 16 kills on a career-high .667 hitting to lead the Cougars (18-7, 7-4). Libero Kendalyn Hartsock had seven digs and middle blocker Kathryn LeCheminant had six blocks.  Setter Heather Hannemann had 29 assists and a career-high four kills.

Attack errors plagued the Broncos (9-12, 2-5) at the start of the first set, giving BYU a 5-0 lead without much effort from the Cougars. A block by Hamson and Nicole Warner gave the Cougars their sixth point before Bronco Megan Anders stopped the scoring streak with two kills. Christie Carpenter scored BYU’s first kill for a 7-2 lead. A Hamson kill put the Cougars ahead 14-4. SCU gained a little momentum with double kills from Dana Knudsen, but the Broncos couldn’t catch up to BYU. Hamson led the charge with three more kills, hitting 100 percent for the set. The Cougars had no attack or block errors in the first set. Hamson and LeCheminant teamed up for a block to end the set 25-11.

Despite the Broncos taking a 2-1 lead early in the second set, a 5-1 BYU run—which included three kills by Hamson—put the Cougars back on top 6-3. Broncos Katherine Douglas and Kaleigh Durket tried to push SCU ahead with kills, but only managed to cut the point deficit to 9-8 before attack errors got the best of them. Two errors and a Hannemann kill gave BYU a 12-8 lead.

Back-to-back service aces from Carpenter brought the score to 17-10. From there, the Cougars allowed a 6-1 Bronco scoring streak to put SCU within three points. Hamson helped hold off SCU with a kill to take the score to 24-19 before Hartsock ended the set on a kill. Hamson once again led the team on offense, adding eight more kills to her total in the second set.

Hamson grabbed the third-set lead early for BYU, batting down two kills before SCU tied the set 2-2. Back-to-back LeCheminant blocks put the Cougars ahead 5-2. The Broncos came back to tie the set 7-7 before bouncing ahead on an error. Cougar errors kept BYU from getting back on top until a kill by Hannemann and two straight Bronco errors tied the set 19-19.

BYU retook the lead when Bronco Lexi Williamson hit the ball out of bounds. Hamson and LeCheminant blocked Williamson to bring the score to 24-22 and LeCheminant wrapped up the set and match with a kill.

BYU heads home for matches against Loyola Marymount and San Francisco, Thursday and Saturday, respectively.

BYU vs. SCU Box Score

PROVO, Utah—With only four weeks of the regular season left, the BYU women’s volleyball team sets out on another California road trip this week, looking to bounce back from its first set of back-to-back losses of the season with matches against San Francisco and Santa Clara.

The match against San Francisco will take place Thursday at 6 p.m. PDT at the War Memorial Gym while the Santa Clara match is set for Saturday at 1 p.m. PDT at the Leavey Event Center.

Traveling to San Francisco and Santa Clara is a great opportunity for us as a team to put ourselves against some formidable opponents,” BYU head coach Shawn Olmstead said. “We have things we are excited to work on before we head out on the trip Wednesday.”

The Cougars (16-7, 5-4) return to action after going 3-1 against both No. 18 Pepperdine and No. 17 San Diego in Provo last week, arguably the hardest week of competition for the Cougars this season.

With the exception of San Francisco, BYU has already defeated every team left to play on its schedule.

The Dons, tied with the Cougars for third place in the league, are on a three-match losing streak after falling to Pepperdine Oct. 15 and Saint Mary’s and Santa Clara last week. The winner of Thursday’s match will take sole ownership of the third-place position. Santa Clara is currently in fifth place in the league after defeating Loyola Marymount and San Francisco last week.

Opposite hitter Jennifer Hamson reached 300 kills in an Oct. 17 victory against Gonzaga. The sophomore now has 329 for a 4.06 average to lead the team and the conference. Hamson also contributes 2.47 digs per set, reaching 200 digs against San Diego, and averages 1.01 blocks.

Backing up Hamson is outside hitter Christie Carpenter with 2.87 kills per set and 2.37 digs per set and setter Heather Hannemann with 10.31 assists per set.

Kendalyn Hartsock and Nicole Warner round out the Cougar defense with libero Hartsock dishing out 4.27 digs per set and middle blocker Warner putting up 1.51 blocks per set. Warner also averages 1.89 kills. Helping out on defense is sophomore middle Kathryn LeCheminant with a 1.10 dig average.

The Dons are led by Vendula Strakova, who has 228 kills at 3.45 per set, and Rebecca Kopilovitch with 4.23 digs per set. Joan Caloiaro contributes 10.25 assists per set and Valentina Zaloznik averages 1.06 blocks.

For the Broncos, Katherine Douglas throws down 3.14 kills per set with the help of Alyssa Anderson’s 6.18 assists per set. On defense, Tanya Schmidt has .66 blocks per set and Bridget O’Hara has 3.86 digs.

For links to video streaming and live stats, click HERE.

BYU vs. San Francisco Notes