Sam Houston Swept at Liberty, but Record-Setting Saturday Battle Reveals Bearkats’ Resilience
By Cheval John | Vallano Media
This article was created with the assistance of artificial intelligence.
The final version was reviewed, edited and fact-checked by the author
Graphics created with AI-assisted design tools.
Visual concepts, editorial direction, composition, and final creative decisions were developed by Vallano Media.
Sam Houston’s volleyball team endured a difficult weekend against Liberty, suffering consecutive Conference USA defeats.
But Saturday’s four-set battle offered a different picture of the Bearkats than Friday’s straight-set loss.
Liberty swept Sam Houston 25–18, 28–26, 25–21 on Friday before holding off a determined comeback Saturday, 25–16, 27–25, 31–33, 26–24, at Liberty Arena in Lynchburg, Virginia.
The results dropped Sam Houston to 14–9 overall and 5–5 in Conference USA play.
Liberty improved to 14–8 and 6–4 in the conference.
Although the Flames completed the weekend sweep, Saturday’s contest featured 42 ties, 16 lead changes and a remarkable 33–31 third set that became the longest in Liberty Arena history, according to Liberty Athletics.
The two matches exposed both sides of Sam Houston’s season: difficulty protecting substantial leads and the determination to remain competitive when facing elimination.
Friday: A Seven-Point Lead Disappears
Friday’s straight-set loss was particularly frustrating because Sam Houston had an opportunity to change the direction of the match.
After dropping the opening set 25–18, the Bearkats established a 20–13 advantage in the second set.
Liberty responded with a sustained rally to erase the deficit.
Sam Houston still had opportunities to close out the set, holding set points at 24–23 and 25–24, but the Flames fought off both chances and eventually prevailed 28–26.
From its 20–13 advantage, Sam Houston was outscored 15–6.
Instead of entering the intermission tied at one set apiece, the Bearkats faced a two-set deficit.
Liberty completed the sweep with a 25–21 third-set victory.
The statistical difference was substantial.
Liberty hit .327 for the match compared with Sam Houston’s .115.
The Bearkats committed 24 attacking errors while recording 38 kills.
Chloe Monson, one of Sam Houston’s offensive contributors throughout the season, experienced a particularly difficult afternoon.
She finished with five kills and nine attacking errors on 29 attempts for a negative .138 hitting percentage.
Bella Wood led Sam Houston with 10 kills, followed by Chelsea Butler with eight and Annika Brooks with six.
Friday’s defeat illustrated how quickly an advantage can disappear when a team struggles to finish a set.
Saturday: Another Lead Lost, but a Different Response
The following afternoon initially appeared to be heading toward another straight-set defeat.
Liberty claimed the first set 25–16, with Sam Houston hitting just .054.
In the second set, the Bearkats again established a six-point advantage, leading 15–9.
But Liberty rallied.
Sam Houston eventually reached set point at 25–24 before the Flames scored three consecutive points to win 27–25.
For the second consecutive day, the Bearkats had surrendered a significant second-set advantage.
Trailing two sets to none, Sam Houston faced another opportunity to respond—or allow the match to end quickly.
This time, the Bearkats refused to go away.
A Historic Third Set
The third set developed into the defining stretch of the weekend.
Sam Houston built an early 15–9 lead, but Liberty recovered and eventually moved ahead 23–21.
During the broadcast, commentators expressed concern about Monson’s offensive struggles and questioned whether Sam Houston should continue directing attacks her way.
What followed demonstrated how quickly an individual performance can change during a tightly contested set.
Monson delivered five crucial kills after Liberty’s 23–21 advantage as the Bearkats battled through an extended series of set points.
Liberty repeatedly answered, and the Flames held two match points during the set.
Sam Houston survived both.
With the score tied at 31–31, Monson delivered another kill to give the Bearkats a 32–31 advantage.
Rachelle Reed followed with the set-winning kill, securing a 33–31 victory and forcing a fourth set.
According to Liberty Athletics, the 64-point set was the longest played in Liberty Arena history.
The performance also marked a significant response from Monson following Friday’s difficult outing.
She finished Saturday with a team-high 14 kills and 12 digs.
The Bearkats had not won the match, but they had extended it with one of the most competitive sets in the arena’s history.
A Fourth Set That Could Have Gone Either Way
The intensity continued into the fourth set.
Early in the frame, with Sam Houston leading 5–3, the Liberty broadcast described nervous energy inside the arena.
The commentators later observed that if Sam Houston forced a fifth set, the deciding frame could belong to either team.
That possibility remained realistic as the Bearkats continued challenging the Flames.
Liberty led 16–13 before Sam Houston scored four consecutive points to move ahead 17–16.
The Bearkats appeared to extend their lead to 18–16 when a Liberty attack was initially ruled out of bounds.
However, Liberty challenged the ruling, arguing that the ball had touched a Sam Houston player before going out.
Although the broadcast commentators considered the replay evidence inconclusive, officials overturned the original decision and awarded the point to Liberty, tying the set at 17–17.
The reversal represented a significant two-point swing in a closely contested set.
Nevertheless, Sam Houston continued competing.
The Bearkats repeatedly answered Liberty’s attacks, tying the score at 19, 20, 21, 22 and 23.
When Jenna Otts delivered a kill to give Liberty a 24–23 advantage and match point, Sam Houston responded with a block involving Chelsea Butler and Faith Roulston to tie the score at 24–24.
The Flames finally secured the victory on consecutive kills from Addison Hart and Paige Overcash.
Liberty won the fourth set 26–24, ending a match that had become considerably more difficult than its two-set lead initially suggested.
Liberty’s Offensive Production Makes the Difference
Liberty’s victory was supported by strong performances from Otts and Overcash, who recorded 19 kills apiece.
Overcash hit .378, added 11 digs, five blocks and three service aces, and delivered the match-winning kill.
Otts hit .362.
The Flames finished with 64 kills compared with Sam Houston’s 62, but Liberty maintained advantages in several other statistical categories.
Liberty hit .284 compared with the Bearkats’.202, recorded 10 service aces to Sam Houston’s four, and finished with 12 blocks compared with eight for the visitors.
Sam Houston held a 73–72 advantage in digs.
Alongside Monson’s 14 kills, Wood and Kameron Rector contributed 13 each.
Butler added 12 kills and four blocks.
Shaelin White led all players with 26 digs, while Brenlin Garlitz recorded 28 assists and Lauren Pyle added 18.
The Bearkats produced more offense Saturday than they had Friday, improving from 38 kills to 62 and raising their hitting percentage from .115 to .202.
Yet Liberty’s greater efficiency and advantage at the service line helped the Flames complete the weekend sweep.
Six Matches Remain
The losses leave Sam Houston at .500 in Conference USA play with six regular-season matches remaining.
Liberty, meanwhile, moved to 6–4 in league competition and extended its all-time series advantage over Sam Houston to 6–0.
It remains too early to determine how the conference tournament race will unfold.
For the Bearkats, the immediate concern is translating Saturday’s competitive response into more consistent execution.
The weekend exposed recurring difficulties protecting leads.
Sam Houston surrendered a 20–13 advantage Friday and a 15–9 lead Saturday, both in the second set.
But Saturday also showed that the Bearkats could recover from adversity rather than allow earlier setbacks to determine the remainder of a match.
The 33–31 third set and the continued resistance following the fourth-set challenge provided evidence of a team still willing to compete.
Liberty earned its two victories, but Sam Houston made the Flames work considerably harder for the second.
With six matches remaining before the postseason, the question is whether the Bearkats can sustain that level of play long enough to turn competitive performances into victories.
SHSU Volleyball Dismantles Cowgirls To Extend Win Streak
Courtesy: Paul Ridings, Jr., SHSU Sports Information
Lake Charles, La. – Led by Deveney Wells-Gibson and Kendall Cleveland who both totaled double figure kills, Sam Houston State rolled to its sixth consecutive victory with a three-set Southland Conference volleyball win over McNeese State Thursday night.
The Bearkats, now 12-9 for the season and 7-2 in league play, defeated McNeese 25-20 25-19 25-23.
The Cowgirls dropped to 6-15 for the year and 1-7 in the Southland.
The match took an hour and 24 minutes.
Five of Sam Houston’s six straight wins have been three-setters as the Kats have won 18 of the last 19 sets they have played since the streak began.
Wells-Gibson produced 18 kills while Cleveland totaled 13. Kaylee Hawkins added seven kills.
Setter Tayler Gray assisted on 45 of Sam Houston’s 47 kills and led the Bearkat defense with 10 digs. Cleveland and Wells-Gibson added eight digs apiece for same Houston.
Both the first and second sets saw three early lead changes before the Bearkats took control.
There were six lead changes in the third and final set.
Sam Houston will complete this weekend’s Southland road trip with a Saturday afternoon match against the Lamar Cardinals in Beaumont.
Five Years And Counting As A Blogger
By Cheval John
Photo courtesy of Forbes via BigStock.com
I still remembered the day I first started blogging five years ago.
I was about to start graduate school and was at an on-campus job fair at my alma mater, Sam Houston State University in Huntsville, Texas.
There were many university departments ranging from the career services to the athletic department looking for people who would fill their positions as an intern or part-time work.
I first approached the athletic department about the possibility of working with their marketing team.
I felt that I was qualified because in the previous semester, I interned at an on-campus public relations agency called Priority One.
The public relations agency is part of the class where students form a company and do real work for clients with the SHSU university departments and in the process gain class credit towards their Mass Communications degree.
In my case, I was auditing the class (which mean I got no class credit, but payed less money for the class)
I took that route because I knew that I would have the opportunity to gain actual public relations experience that would give me an opportunity to compete with other graduates for work at a marketing/public relations company.
So I applied for the marketing position at the athletic department’s booth and got rejected because I was overqualified.
A couple of minutes later, I saw the booth of the college’s newspaper of record, “The Houstonian”
I went up to the booth and the editor-of-chief of the newspaper had asked me if I had wanted to be their blogger.
Prior to her asking me about becoming their blogger, I had a vague idea of what a blog was.
That idea of a blog probably came about from an NCIS episode when the main character, Gibbs, asked the forensic scientist, Abby, what a blog was since the sister of special agent McGee, who was portrayed by Trioan Bellasario, had a blog.
And since I did not had any prior blogging experience, I could have told her, “No, I don’t want to work as a blogger.”
However, I said yes to the opportunity of becoming a blogger because I knew that it would allow me to become part of the college newspaper and gain experience as a journalist.
I was then connected with the person who was in charge of their social media to set up an account for the blog.
She had “recommended” using WordPress to set up the blog.
It was at that time, I came up with the name, “What’s The Word?” and created the blog with the free WordPress.com account.
After that, the social media editor linked the blog to the school’s newspaper account.
Then, I written my very first blog post on January 27th, 2011 entitled, “Hello Everyone,” which for some reason, the blog date is 6 hours ahead of central time.
It was awesome to realize that I was simultaneously blogging for the school newspaper and myself because I was the only one who had access to this blog.
I also knew that I had the platform to share my opinions of what is happening on my college’s campus, the sports world, etc.
It was also cool that blogging led me to become a sportswriter because of my curiousity to see what it would be like to cover a sporting event.
And the opportunity came about when the SHSU baseball and softball team was hosting a weekend series during spring break.
I decided to attend the softball double-header matchup on Saturday and then the baseball matchup on Sunday.
This blog post, “A Weekend Not To Remember” came about from covering both athletic teams that weekend.
Also, that spring break weekend of covering those sporting events got me hooked on being a sports writer.
As a sportwriter for the college newspaper, I was able to cover the SHSU Volleyball team and simultaneously covered the SHSU Football Team run toward the national championship for the blog.
Eventually, I “left” the school newspaper after I took a semester off from graduate school and converted this blog into my media company, “Vallano Media.”
At the same time, I became a freelance sportswriter for the Huntsville Item in addition to running this company and covered teams that won conference championships in their respective sports.
I have also written two books and hosted a podcast called, “What’s The Word?” on BlogTalkRadio (now recording the show on the live streaming platform called blab first).
The reason why I will continue to blog is because I still have the desire to make a positive impact in the world for the better.
Plus, I know that I am apart of a crowd who are setting themselves up for success for the better because of their blogs, podcasts, YouTube channel, etc.
The people above will thrive for the better despite the continued layoffs due to companies shutting down or merging to become a giant corporation.
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