Amber Kraaz had seven kills for the Beacons.
EUGENE, Ore. – The Northwest Christian University volleyball team held a nine-point lead during the third set, but was unable to close the deal, falling in three sets to Eastern Oregon on Saturday afternoon, 25-14, 25-16, 29-27.
The Beacons were not at their best in the first two sets, finishing with a negative hitting percentage each time and seeming to be overmatched. Something clicked in the third set, however, as NCU jumped out to a quick 5-3 lead and expanded their advantage to as much as 15-8 after back-to-back serving aces from Whitney Hoff. Eastern Oregon, however, quickly climbed back in with a 9-1 run, taking the lead at 17-16 on a Beacon attacking error.
NCU continued to push and held a 23-21 lead. The Mounties mounted another comeback with three straight points and sat on match-point four times before finally closing out the set with a Jessica Lea kill. The Beacons had just previously held their own match-point at 27-26, but couldn’t pull it out.
Head Coach Mike Gaffaney said, “That third set was exactly what we have been looking for. We continue to struggle passing the ball on serve receive, and we need to do better at getting the side out when our opponent is serving. We did a better job of that in the third set and that was directly reflected in the close score.”
All around the Beacons had a better effort in that third set. Taylor Hatleberg had nine assists, Mercedes Leclaire had seven digs and Emily Miller, who was 0-for-18 on attacks in the first two sets with five errors, went 4-for-10 in third set without a single error. The Beacon cause was also helped by a rattled EOU team that had a total of 13 errors in the game. “That is a great example,” said Gaffaney, “of what an underdog can do to an opponent when you shake up their confidence a little bit.”
Eastern Oregon (4-3, 2-0 CCC) was led by Grace Deboodt who hit .242 with 12 kills, 14 digs and four blocks. Jessica Lea added six kills and 20 assists and Kathy Duncan had 15 digs. Julie Butterfield also had four blocks as Eastern out-blocked the Beacons 11.5 to 4 in the contest.
Northwest Christian (2-5, 0-2) got a match-high eight kills from Cassie Bishop who added ten digs. Amber Kraaz had seven kills in the middle and Kayla Hansen added three kills and four blocks. Hatleberg led the team with 15 assists. LeClaire finished with a match-high 16 digs and was once again praise for her performance by coach Gaffaney. “Cedes continues to be phenomenal,” he said, “Last year if she made a mistake she would pull her head out of the game for the next two or three plays. This year she comes right back, continues to make great reads and lets it slide off her back. She is going to be exciting to watch all season long.”
Another solid afternoon came from senior Tessa Greatwood, finishing with four kills, three blocks and two service aces. “That was an intense match for us,” she said. “We really wanted that one to prove to ourselves that we can beat one of the top three teams in our conference. With the way we played, hopefully we sent a message to ourselves and to the conference that we can hang with the top dogs any day.”
Northwest Christian will be back in action next Friday night as they travel to Washington for a weekend series against The Evergreen State College and Northwest University. Coach Gaffaney said, “When we looked at the schedule at the beginning of the year, the first instinct was ‘oh no’ when we saw Idaho and Eastern as our first two conference matches. But now that they are over with, we get to get them out of our hair for a little while, and we have been given a lot of things that we need to work on, and we are going to be a much better team for it.”