STEPHENVILLE, Texas – The Texas A&M-Corpus Christi volleyball team earned its first win of the 2026 season in a thriller on Thursday afternoon, erasing a 2-1 set count deficit to come back and down Denver 25-23, 24-26, 24-26, 25-22, 15-6 in its first game of this weekend's Tarleton State Invitational.
 
The Islanders (1-4) started out their run in Stephenville hot, opening the first set by jumping out to a quick 7-3 lead with kills from Kenna Buchanan, Ava Hight and Ally Saleh leading the way. The Pioneers (5-2) flipped the script from here to bring the score up to 14-11 in their favor, but A&M-Corpus Christi responded in a big way, ripping off a 10-3 run highlighted by four different kills from Saleh to bring it back to a four-point advantage in its favor. This lead would hold the rest of the way, with a kill from Tatum Mason putting the team on set point and an attacking error securing the 25-23 win.
 
This momentum did not carry on into the next set, as Denver opened up a 14-7 lead in the second period to put the Islanders in a deep hole for the first time on the day. Like in the opener, though, they managed to put together an extended run to snatch the lead right back, scoring 15 of the next 20 points to completely erase this deficit and turn it into a 23-19 lead. Sitting just two points away from a commanding 2-0 lead, A&M-Corpus Christi could not seal the deal, with the Pioneers eventually tying things back up at 24 apiece and then taking the next two points to suddenly even up the match at one set apiece.
 
As it turned out, the third set would play out in a similar fashion, starting with the Islanders immediately opening up a 14-4 lead with two kills apiece from Mason and Buchanan and one from Saleh and Kaitlyn Aleshire. Like in set two, though, Denver roared back, flipping the switch to eventually tie things up at 20-20 as the period progressed toward its conclusion. Kills from Saleh and Sydney Yohe put the blue and green on set point, but once again, they could not slam the door shut, surrendering three consecutive points to find themselves with their backs against the wall.
 
The second straight narrow set loss was made even worse with the beginning of the fourth set, as A&M-Corpus Christi surrendered seven of the first eight points and eventually fell into a 15-10 hole at the media timeout. From this point, however, the Islanders found their biggest spark of the night, mounting a spirited effort to stave off the Pioneers and force a decisive fifth set. This comeback started with a kill from Hight after the timeout, which then got followed by three from Buchanan to bring the score level at 18. After trading points to make it 19 apiece, the team then scored seven of the final nine, doing so with two kills from Saleh and an attack error on the last point to lock things up.
 
Still buzzing from this turnaround, the Islanders proceeded to dominate the last set, going up 5-2 thanks in large part to service aces from Brooklyn Jaeger and Madison Morrow and never looking back from there. The best run of this period was a 5-0 stretch powered by three straight kills from Buchanan, a run that was then followed up with four points in a row to end the game, with the final two coming on another ace from Buchanan and finally a kill from Yohe to secure the team's first victory of the year.
 
The Islanders were able to emerge victorious in large part due to better hitting as the afternoon went on, as after dropping the third set, they hit .293 in the fourth and a white-hot .462 in the fifth, notching six kills in 13 total attacks. They also limited their own errors in this time as well, committing just eight over the final three sets after recording nine in the second set alone and seeing 15 from Denver over that same time frame. Finally, the team also made its money on serves, tallying 11 aces in total against just seven from the Pioneers.
 
Individually, A&M-Corpus Christi had four different players reach double-digit kills, with Saleh leading the way at 19 and Buchanan, Mason and Hight following behind with 14, 12 and 10 respectively. Buchanan and Hight affected the game greatly in other ways as well, with the former notching a double-double with 12 digs and the latter reaching a rare triple-double after notching 10 digs of her own and a match-leading 43 assists. Also leading the way in her own category was Jaeger, who recorded 22 digs to inch her ever closer to 1000 for her collegiate career.
 
The Islanders will now try to make it two in a row in the second game of the Tarleton State Invitational on Friday, returning to action against Sam Houston at 2 p.m.
 
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