Oklahoma City, Okla.---The primary goal set by Wayland Baptist volleyball coach Jim Giacomazzi when he took over as head coach of the Pioneers in April of 2007 was to beat Lubbock Christian University, something no Pioneer team had done since 1997. On Thursday afternoon at Abe Lemon's Arena, in the semi-final match of the Sooner Athletic Conference Tournament, that 11 year drought was ended when Giacomazzi's Pioneers took care of the Lady Chaps in an exciting five-set match, 25-19, 18-25, 16-25, 25-16, 15-12.

"There are a lot of tears flowing right now," said Giacomazzi, who knows something about winning championships, having won a NCAA Division II title with West Texas A&M in the early 90's. "It is an exciting win for our program, and an exciting win for the university.

"I've always told the girls that if you can beat LCU, then you can beat everybody else. They have been the benchmark team in the conference for a number of years. We've managed to beat everybody else already, and now we've taken care of them. That should give us confidence going into the championship game tomorrow against whomever we play."

If the Pioneers are successful in Friday evening's title match against the winner of the other semi-final match between John Brown and Oklahoma City, they will have to face LCU (the SAC regular season champion) one more time for the right to advance to the opening round of the NAIA Championship Tournament. That match is set for Saturday afternoon at 3 p.m.

"We came out and played an awesome first set and that seemed to throw them off. We didn't play as well in the second set or the third, but came back and really played a terrific fourth game. I expected that the first team to eight in the fifth would win, and fortunately we got there first."

The Lady Chaps got the first point in the first set of the match, but the WBU women took control from there. Freshman Kimberli Harger got six of her team-high 13 kills in the opener.

The Pioneers opened the second set with a service error, and that seemed to be a portent of things to come. WBU ended up losing the set by seven points, six of which came off errors on the serve.

After committing just five attack errors in the first two sets combined, the Wayland women totaled six in the third, but Lubbock Christian returned the favor in the fourth set with nine miscues on the attack.

The Pioneers jumped out to a 4-3 lead in the fourth, thanks in part to three straight LCU attack errors. Kills by Audrey Hemminger, Hailey Clark, Desiree Luevano and Anika Voigt helped widened the gap to 14-7, and then four more LCU errors put the Wayland women up 18-9.

The Lady Chaps managed to narrow the margin to 21-16 after a timeout, but back-to-back kills by Hemminger and Clark forced the deciding fifth set.

The action in the finale was tight early until consecutive kills by Wyatt, Voigt and Harger put the Pioneers up 8-5. Voigt got her second of the set after a LCU timeout to make it 9-5. Lubbock Christian scored three straight to get within one, but two Harger kills and two hitting errors stretched the WBU lead back out to five.

Consecutive ball handling errors made it 13-10, but a big kill by Hemminger gave the Pioneers match point. The Lady Chaps weren't done though, coming back with two good hits to pull to within 14-12. Hemminger took care of the rally, burying her next attempt, snapping the 28-match losing streak, and giving Wayland its first shot at a conference title since 1996.

Three Pioneers tallied double-doubles in the match. Harger had a team-high 13 kills and 17 digs, Luevano recorded 11 kills and 15 digs, and Voigt handed out 43 assists to go with her 15 digs.

Clark also got to the double digit mark in kills with 10, while Staci Wilt registered 15 digs and Bethany Lewis got 14. Hemminger had a match-high .348 hitting percentage with eight kills and three blocks, while Wyatt put down six kills and was credited with a match-high five blocks.

Friday evening's championship match is schedule for 6 p.m.