By: Marley Wolf

For the Yellow Jacket

The Waynesburg Yellow Jackets traveled to Steubenville, Ohio to take on the Franciscan Barons in a head to head volleyball matchup on Tuesday, Oct. 5. 

Waynesburg came out with a victory, 3-1, which brought its conference record to 3-6 and their overall record to 9-10. 

After falling to Franciscan 3-2 back on Sept. 25, the Yellow Jackets are now split 1-1 in the head-to-head matchup this season.

The Yellow Jackets started strong and won the first two sets over the Barons. Leading the offense, freshman Makayla Osborn contributed 14 kills on the night. In order to continually play strong, Osborn felt that keeping the team’s energy high was the key

“We definitely had to keep the energy up both on the court and on the bench,” Osborn said. “We had to make sure to minimize our own errors. Volleyball is really a game of who makes 25 errors first, so we had to work to do the little things and keep the pressure on them and keep our energy up.”

Waynesburg’s head coach Emily Taylor talked about the necessary changes that were made in order to be victorious against the Barons.

“The biggest adjustment we made was setting up our defense to better handle hard hit balls to the cut shot from Franciscan’s outside hitters,” Taylor said. “With that shot being taken away last night, their outsides had to try different arm swings and our block was prepared for them.”

The Yellow Jacket defense was led by junior Alexys Marsh who contributed five blocks for Waynesburg. This defense added the extra support Waynesburg needed when Franciscan came back and won the third set of the game. 

Winning the fourth set, Waynesburg powered their way to victory and is now looking forward to a tri-match at Chatham University against the host Chatham Cougars and the Westminster Titans this upcoming Saturday. 

Osborn is planning to continue to have the same team energy going into these two big matches.

“We are definitely going to carry the energy that we had on Tuesday night into Saturday,” Osborn said. “We are going to work out absolute hardest to prepare both mentally and psychically for the two tough teams coming up on Saturday.”