Dominance is defined as having control over your destiny or to impose control on ones circumstances.

Nothing could be more true than with the Lady Blues volleyball team as they rolled back across the Missouri border into southern Kansas. Their destination: Pittsburg, Kan. and the “jungle” of Pittsburg State University (11-17).

Washburn, coming off the previous evening’s authoritative performance against Southwestern Baptist (3-0 victory) came into the match wary. Pittsburg State had downed visiting Emporia State University the previous evening in a test of wills that went 3-2 resulting in an upset win for the underdog Gorillas.

Washburn though felt confident in their play going into the Saturdays match.

“We’re just hitting the ball well right now and doing a lot of things well,” said Chris Herron, Washburn head coach. “We still have some things we can work on but we feel pretty good about our play.”

The Lady Blues opened up the match with strong play near the net, repeatedly sending attacks scorching down on the Gorillas as they took the early lead on a 4 point run followed by a 5 point run.

Pittsburg State finally called a timeout after the score escalated to 10-2 in Washburn’s favor.

After the timeout, the Lady Blues sparred with the Gorillas exchanging points but never letting the lead shrink to more than 6 en route to a 25-14 set win for the Lady Blues

The second set was more of the same, as Washburn got the early lead 4-0 and then never looked back led by Jessica Kopp, sophomore outside/middle hitter and Hillary Hughes, sophomore outside hitter who finished the match with 12 and 11 kills respectively.

The third set was more of an even fight as both teams went back and forth exchanging heated points before Washburn finally broke away late in the set on a 5 point run that broke the back and will of Pittsburg State winning the final match 25-19 and taking the match 3-0 to finish off an impressive road swing for the Lady Blues who only trailed twice the entire weekend through six sets of play.

Coming Up: Washburn returns home to host Fort Hays State University 7 p.m. Nov. 9 at Lee Arena.