Stowell Ends Match, Streak, With Emphasis

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Team	1	2	3	4	Final F
Northern Colo.	22	23	25	19	1
Colorado St.	25	25	22	25	3

Northern Colo.

Colorado St.

About damn time.

That's what Kekua Richards thought. She thought it before Colorado State took the floor Tuesday night at Moby Arena. She was thinking it down the stretch at the end.

Finish this.

"Oh, absolutely. What are you talking about? We haven't won since 2019," Richards said of the matchup with Northern Colorado. "I think that was the main intention that we had after we played SMU. We took this game just as seriously as we did with SMU. We all set an intention that not only is this a game that we need to take very seriously, but also, we also just freshly lost too.

"We wanted to prove a point that we weren't just going to let that happen consistently. So, I think this was very important that everybody just kind of stood on their ground a little bit more and just kind of showed everybody that we weren't just going to get passed over again."

It has been five years of frustration for the Rams when facing their NorCo neighbors, making the 3-1 (25-22, 25-23, 22-25, 25-19) victory feel that much sweeter.

Leave it to the kid who was oblivious about it all to put an exclamation point on the night.

Freshman Ella Stowell powered three consecutive kills past a wall the Bears had set all evening, finishing with a career-best 16 kills the first time in her career she reached double digits. Much of the night felt like a struggle for Colorado State's hitters with Northern Colorado posting 18.5 blocks and digging up 57 balls.

Once the Rams had put the streak to bed, she was told all about what it really meant.

"I just found out after we won that game. They just told me after, but I had no idea," Stowell said. "I knew it had been a while, but I didn't know it was six years."

Stowell has pushed her way into a prominent role as an outside hitter on roster littered with veteran hitters. In just three matches, she's experienced success and frustration. Against No. 11 SMU, she struggled to start but finished strong.

As much power as the swing in her right arm can produce, it's the way she has handled everything since her arrival on campus in May that has drawn the most applause.

"Ella leading the box score and taking some big brave swings in big moments … She's only going to get better from a scouting-report side and defensively and ball handling, but you can't teach a freshman to be as brave as Ella came in here being," CSU coach Emily Kohan said. "She seems to back down to no one and be scared of no one and wants to show up in big moments. Even in practice she kind of demands the ball like that, and so what a bright future she has."

Winning the first game was big. Rare in the past five years.

Taking the second set – in tight fashion – was rather notable, considering Colorado State had not held a 2-0 advantage against Northern Colorado in the past handful of matchups.

All losses. Not the kind of streak which sits well with a team like Colorado State, one steeped in a tradition of winning. Especially not against an in-state rival less than an hour to the east. Not that Northern Colorado is ever bad; the Bears also have NCAA Tournament pedigree.

The Bears also have a way of frustrating the Rams, somehow, some way.

"They're so scrappy. That is the one thing that we always say when we always scout this team, is that the one unique thing that they have is that they're so scrappy and they never let anything fall," Richards said. "They want to beat us just as much, if not more than we want to beat them, and so, they come out every single year and they never fail to just keep picking balls up and giving it their all. And they're 100 percent. And I give them so much respect for that.

"It's so frustrating. It's the most annoying thing that especially an attacker can go through."

Halle Jameson had her first double-double of the year and the 12^th of her career, but it was a complete grind-it-out night for the sophomore. She finished with 13 digs and 12 kills, but that latter total came on 45 swings as she was blocked multiple times. The Bears were ready for her.

The Bears even made it tough on CSU's middles, but Richards found some success in key moments, finishing with eight kills and four blocks as the team finished with 10.

It was the odd mistakes which Kohan said the team will need to clean up in short order, but the flip side was the Rams found a way to piece together a victory, most notably the eight service aces, two each from Jameson, Maria Brun and Silvie Graetzer.

"I would rather win ugly than lose pretty and so learning how to win ugly is a skill," she said. "I think that our team again is figuring out ways to be successful even when it's not what we drew up on the game plan, and I think that's some maturity."
And a dash of ignorance. Who needs to know the importance of what's at stake when a hitter is on a roll. Richards watched those final three swings unfold from the bench, just knowing setter Erin Debiec (who had 39 assists) was going to recognize the hot hand.

The first kill in the sequence felt pretty good. So good, in fact, Stowell wanted the ball again. And again.

Confidence is a skill like any other, and Stowell said hers has been bolstered by her teammates.

So, one more time for emphasis.

"She just knows. She believes in me and she gives me confidence that she's going to send me the ball," Stowell said. "She knows I'm going to get a kill. It was the last few points of that match. We were stuck in the middle over there in row one. I was hitting and I don't normally pass. And she was like, 'be ready, like you're going to put this ball down.' And just giving me that confidence.

"Coming into that last match, the last points, I just wanted to come in and finish it. I didn't want to lose to this team. I didn't want to go five. I just wanted to finish it."

The match, and without even knowing it, a streak the Rams wanted kill.

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