Battle Mountain Volleyball Survives Nerves to Beat Summit

Montrose —Battle Mountain volleyball is 6-0 in the 4A Western Slope. That’s not a typo, and it isn’t luck. It’s a statistical anomaly that usually gets erased by a single bad weekend, but the Huskies just survived their first real test of the conference season without dropping a set.

The obvious take is that this was another easy win for the dominant High Country program. The reality, according to Vail Daily reporting on Tuesday night’s match in Edwards, is that the Huskies were out of their minds with nerves for the first 20 minutes.

Coming off a 3-0 loss to Montrose, Battle Mountain found themselves trailing conference foe Summit 23-22 in the opening frame. On paper, that’s a close game. In practice, it was a crisis. The Huskies had trailed 4-0 early and 18-13 late in that first set. They were getting blocked at the net, missing sets, and generally playing like a team that had just lost to a rival they usually beat by double digits.

Then Eve Steinberg, the libero in the pink jersey, started yelling.

She rallied the team during a timeout, and Battle Mountain scored the next three straight points behind two aces by Lela Goehring. The momentum shift was immediate and total. They never trailed again, winning 25-23, 25-13, and 25-15.

Coach Scott Graves didn’t sugarcoat the opening set. “It was a little nerve wracking,” he told the Vail Daily after the match. He noted that while there are things to work on, “when we’re doing what we want to do, it’s going to be fun.”

The fix wasn’t just Steinberg’s volume. It was rotation. Joanna Kent, who started the match frustrated by Summit’s defense, found her rhythm with a serving run. Goehring followed with a seven-serve streak that included two more aces in the first set alone. Setters Sky Gwin and Lucia Daniel kept everyone involved, and Ruth Casey made timely kills in the second set when the team settled into a rhythm.

This matters because Battle Mountain’s 10-4 overall record is built on this kind of resilience. They’re not just winning; they’re winning ugly, then winning clean. That’s the difference between a team that can handle pressure and one that crumbles under it.

The real test isn’t Tuesday’s win over Summit. It’s this weekend in Denver, where the Huskies face a four-match tournament that could make or break their state standings. Graves called it “hands full.”

Let’s do the math on what that means for locals who follow the team. Battle Mountain is 6-0 in conference play, but they have four more league matches to finish the season. If they drop even one of those Denver games, their state ranking could slip enough to change seeding for the playoffs. The 4A Western Slope is small, but it’s not empty. Montrose already proved they can beat the Huskies when Battle Mountain is off its game.

The practical bottom line: The Huskies are still the team to beat in the High Country, but they’re not untouchable. They proved Tuesday that they can dig out of a hole, but they also proved they fall into holes more often than their record suggests. The Denver tournament is where that 6-0 conference streak either solidifies into a state title contender or cracks under the weight of its own expectations.

Graves said his team’s spikes will “come around” once they get their sets right. For now, the data says they’re 10-4 and conference leaders. The next four games will tell you if that’s a trend or a fluke.