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WEST VALLEY CITY — LOVB Atlanta head coach Paulo Coco had just one more thing he wanted out of his first trip to the Wasatch Front as part of League One Volleyball's "Weekend with LOVB," the four-team mini-invitational Friday and Saturday at the Maverik Center.
"I have to come here to ski," the Brazilian international quipped before his team's 3-0 win over LOVB Madison for their sixth win in a row.
He'll be in a good mood when he does.
Ever since a 3-1 home loss to LOVB Salt Lake in the first-year professional volleyball league's season opener on Jan. 8, LOVB Atlanta has won six in a row, including Friday night's 3-1 win over the host team before downing Madison in three sets (25-20, 25-15, 25-21) in a Saturday matinee that saw nine kills, two aces and 11 digs from Gia Day.
The win clinched the No. 1 seed for Atlanta in next week's midseason LOVB Classic in Kansas City, a rare true neutral-site for the six-team league with franchises in Atlanta; Houston, Texas; Austin, Texas; Omaha, Nebraska; Madison, Wisconsin; and Salt Lake City.
Good memories or not, Salt Lake City left an impression on LOVB Atlanta.
"It's beautiful, right off the plane," said Tessa Grubbs, who followed up her 23 kills Friday night with 13 against Madison. "The mountains are beautiful."
Added Coco: "It's a beautiful city. Very beautiful."
It wasn't as good of a weekend for the host team, which lost its third match in the last four since a 3-1 win over LOVB Houston in the club's home opener on Jan. 22 at Bruin Arena in Taylorsville.
That included a five-set (17-25, 21-25, 25-18, 25-25-19, 12-15) loss to LOVB Omaha in Saturday's nightcap.
Omaha hit at a 70.7% sideout percentage, and kept Salt Lake to just .158 attack efficiency en route to a 2-0 lead. Led by former University of Utah four-time All-American Dani Drews and two-time U.S. Olympian Haleigh Washington, Salt Lake pulled one back with a 25-18 win in the third set.
For the second straight week, LOVB Salt Lake (3-5) forced a five-set match on the weekend after dropping the opener when Skylar Fields collected her 18th kill of the match to win the fourth 25-19.
But Jaali Winters poured in 20 kills and 10 digs, and Jordan Larson added 10 kills and 14 digs to help Omaha (4-2) stop a two-match slide after starting the season with three straight wins.
"It's always nice to leave an away trip with a win," said Winters, whose team clinched a top-three seed and a first-round bye in the Kansas City tournament. "We had a lot of meetings after those two losses, and wanted to upgrade a few things. We didn't feel like we needed to go back to square one or anything. But now it's nice to see that our hard work and communication is really paying off for us.
"It feels like we're headed in the right direction."
Fields finished with 24 points on 20 kills with three blocks and seven digs; and Washington had 17 points on 10 kills, five blocks and three digs.
Former BYU and Copper Hills star Roni Jones-Perry added nine kills, three blocks and 12 digs for Salt Lake; and Drews accumulated eight kills, two blocks and 10 digs.
In rallying from an 0-2 deficit to forcing a fifth set tied at two apiece, LOVB Salt Lake head coach Tama Miyashiro saw some tactical adjustments and technical maniuplations as her team fought back into the match.
Wouldn't be Salt Lake without a little snow! ❄️
— LOVB Salt Lake Volleyball (@lovbsl) February 9, 2025
Game time in T-minus 10 minutes! ⏳ pic.twitter.com/DPxWLcO8C5
But there was something else, too.
"When you take a step back, I think we saw an attitude and a mindset adjustment," said Miyashiro, an eight-year veteran of the U.S. national team. "How cool was it to see competitors and professionals do that in a high-stakes environment.
"Seeing that switch happen was really cool," she added. "You don't want to start the way we did, but part of sports is how the opponent stays in it, right? I think we had some really good engagement by our block defense, serving opened the game for us, and we had consistent pressure, which we've been struggling with a little bit. It was reallyl good to see that from ourselves — and all of a sudden, you have a tight ballgame."
Added LOVB Omaha head coach Suzie Fritz, the former all-time winningest coach at Kansas State with 393 career victories: "That was an upgrade by them, more than anything else. It's a really good volleyball team, a physical team, and as we started to fatigue a bit their block was pretty gnarly and caused us some trouble."
LOVB Salt Lake is back home March 20 to host LOVB Madison. First serve is scheduled for 7 p.m. MST at Bruin Arena on the Salt Lake Community College campus.
