Women's volleyball team tops Arizona Western in five sets

The Eastern Florida State College women's volleyball team won a thrilling five-set match with host Arizona Western late Friday night at the Chapman Automotive AWC Invitational in Yuma, Arizona.

The 18^th-ranked Titans improved to 5-0 on the season after the 23-25, 25-18, 19-25, 25-20, 15-12 victory.

"It's one of those matches that is really hard, when they play at home in front of their fans, their game rises to another level," Eastern "We didn't play our best, had a lot of errors but we were able to keep coming back and that shows the character of this group. The good thing that we showed is that we did not panic, we came out and showed that fire and the hungriness to keep competing."

The first set was tight throughout with the two teams trading the lead throughout the set. Arizona Western rallied, scoring four straight points to lock up the first set.

But the Titans struck back in the second set behind sophomore Paulina Dobrinova who took the ball with the Titans trailing 6-4 and served seven straight points as the Titans took an 11-6 lead. From there every time it seemed like Arizona Western would get back into the set, one of the sophomores would make a play to keep the Titans on top. Daphne Wibranowski and Dobrinova came up big with a block, Juliana De Acharan had an ace and Flavia Romanelli had a kill as the Titans would tie things up 1-1.

The third set saw Arizona Western lead from the start and once again took the lead with the 25-19 win.

But the fourth set saw the pendulum swing back to the Titans who stopped an Arizona Western run that tied the set 13-13 with kills from Wibranowski and Romanelli. Sofia Kamke would add a couple of kills late as did Sophia Knowles as the Titans would force a fifth set.

The fifth set was tight throughout as the teams were tied at 8, 10, 11 and 12 before the Titans took over with three straight points to close out the win.

"Paulina (Dobrinova) came up big tonight, we thought she would make a comeback after her injury and she played well. Another good effort, we will take it. It wasn't pretty and not really how you want to win but we will take it against a team like that," Eleutiza said.

The loss was the first of the season for Arizona Western who is now 6-1 on the season.

Eastern Florida State College will play a couple of ranked teams in the final day of the AWC Invitational, taking on No. 5 Salt Lake Community College at 2 p.m. EST and then face No. 13 Eastern Arizona at 6 p.m. EST.