The Sooners wasted no time taking a lead against the Central Arkansas Bears Wednesday night in the last game of their early season home stand.

Junior Suzy Boulavsky recorded her first kill of the match on the first serve and OU won 3-1 (-16, -22, 23-25, -18).

OU went on a 5-0 run, capped by an early block from Boulavsky, to start the match.

Then, after Central Arkansas got its first point of the game to make the score 6-1, OU got some help from the bench.

Freshman Cortney Warren made a huge block on her first play of the game to bring the Sooner lead back to six.

The Bears were able to come within two points of the Sooners later in the match, but OU responded to every run that Central Arkansas made and took the first set 25-16.

The Sooners hit a slight bump in the road in the second set, finding themselves down 0-3. However, they responded quickly with yet another Boulavsky kill to make the score 3-1. Then, down 7-6, Senior Francie Ekwerekwu made her first kill of the match count to tie up the set 7-7.

The two teams exchanged points until the Sooners took charge with the set tied at 22. Junior Caitlin Higgins recorded her eighth and ninth kills of the night to give the Sooners a 24-22 lead. The team won the set on the next serve and headed to the break with a 2-0 lead.

“We were just trying to focus on playing our game even if we fall behind,” Higgins said. “That’s something that we struggled with last year, so that was really big for us.”

In the third set, the Sooners started out strong, but the Bears still had some fight in them. With OU down by two, senior Sarah Freudenrich scored two of her three kills to tie the game back up.

Central Arkansas finished stronger, though, and took the set 25-23.

The fourth set began much like the third ended, with the two teams trading points.

But the tide began to turn for the Sooners midway through the match. The team had relied on individual players to come up big for the Sooners all night, but it took the decisive fourth set as a unit.

The Sooners recorded a match-high 18 kills and .400 hitting percentage to win the final set 25-18.

“Everyone really wanted to just get out there and get the kills that we needed and finish it,” Boulavsky said.

Though OU allowed the Bears to stay in the match at times, the team stayed in control and, led by Boulavsky and Higgins with 19 and 16 kills respectively, closed the match to improve to 3-1 in this young season.

“We wouldn’t have been able to get 16 and 19 kills without great play from everybody else,” Boulavsky said. “We can’t have success in one aspect of the game without everything else going smoothly. Everything was just clicking for us.”