Viking_Yearbook_93

T he Portland State volleyball team, behind clutch hitting and defense, rode a wave of emotion to its fourth national champi­ onship on Dec. 7 at “The Gym” on the Park Blocks. The Vikings, buoyed by 1,512 raucous fans fought back from a two games to one deficit and captured the NCAA Division II championship, upending Northern Michigan in a heart-stopping five- game match 13-15, 15-12, 13-15, 15-8, 15-10. wm PSU improved its season record to 36-1 and ended the season on a 28-match winning streak, which is a new school record. The Vikings won national titles in 1984, 1985, and 1988, but head coach Jeff Mozzochi related that none have come close as far as excitement goes. “We’ve won titles before, but nothing’s been this exciting,” Mozzochi said fol­ lowing the victory. “It’s just an unbelievable comeback by a group of gutsy women.” It was a showdown of the nations top two teams-Portland State had been ranked number one all season long while Northern Michigan held the number two ranking, and the match turned out to be what one would expect between the two best teams in the country. “It’s funny because Jim Moore [Northern Michigan head coach] and I talked / on the phone about three or four weeks ago and we were talking about the play- f offs and pairings and if both of our teams played up to their potentials that we’d meet in the final and it’d probably go five games and it’d probably never end,” Mozzochi said. “They [Northern Michigan] did one heck of a job.” The Wildcats held 9-2 and later 13-5 advantages in the third game before the Vikings scored seven unanswered points to draw to within 13-12, prompting the Wildcats and coach Jim Moore to call a timeout. From there, the teams scored a point apiece until Andrea Gommans ended the game with a kill, giving Northern Michigan a 2-1 lead. Northern Michigan opened the fourth game much the same way it had the previous three taking a 6-2 lead on tough hitting and nice passing. Portland State went on another 7-0 run to take a 9-6 lead led by Leanne Peters and Erika Boggio, who both were named to the Elite Eight All-Tournament team. The two combined to score five of the seven Viking points during the spurt. PSU would go on to score six of the game’s final eight points thanks to some untimely errors on the part of Northern Michigan which the Viks took advantage of by turning the errors into points. The fifth and deciding game was frenzied as the fans got into the match, providing a huge lift for the Vikings, who for most of the evening were plagued by rare hitting errors and defensive mistakes. The lead seesawed back and forth until Shelly Earl’s block put the Vikings on top for good at 9-8. Suzy Hall, the Vikings’ lone senior, served the game’s final point, and Joy Russell sent a kill careening off a Northern Michigan backrow player into the stands, ending the game and giving the Vikings their record-setting fourth championship. It was the Wildcats who were reading the Vikings block well for most of the match until the end when Northern Michigan committed crucial errors and couldn’t handle the short serving of the Vikings. “They took us a little bit out of our game,” Moore said. “They served short on us and we had trouble for some unknown reason. People have done that to us all year long and it hasn’t bothered us. I can’t explain why, it just happened that way.” S t o r y b y C . f i r t s