First Day of First Ever Challenge Comes to an End
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SPOKANE, Wash. – The inaugural Red Lion Cascade/Frontier Conference Challenge opened Thursday with nine different teams competing in two sports.
The athletic events, matching teams from the two northwest NAIA conferences will span over five weekends, beginning this weekend and ending in mid-November. All contests will be held in Spokane, and include; volleyball, men's and women's soccer, men's and women's basketball and a cross country meet with sections for both men and women. Volleyball and men’s soccer run from Thursday through Sunday.
The Frontier Conference opened the challenge winning five of the six contests against Cascade Collegiate Conference programs. Eastern Oregon was the lone victor from the Cascade Conference on day one.
The challenge began with a pair of volleyball matches at the HUB Sports Complex. The University of Great Falls (Mont.) and Montana State-Northern both pulled out four-set victories.
UGF jumped out to a 25-12 first set win, but the final three sets were battles with Northwest Christian (Ore.). The Beacons grabbed the second set 25-21, but Great Falls held off NCU by two points in the last two sets.
In the first match on Court 2, a back-and-forth thriller between Northwest (Wash.) and MSU-Northern featured 13 ties and five lead changes. The first set had five ties before the Lights escaped with the 25-23 victory. Northwest grabbed a 25-23 win in set two, but MSUN dominated the third set, 25-13. Northern squeezed out a 25-22 fourth set victory to claim the match.
The second matches on both courts were sweeps. Eastern Oregon and Carroll College (Mont.) looked dominant in their victories. EOU controlled the majority of its match against Montana Western, while the No. 21 Saints never trailed to The Evergreen State College (Wash.).
The Mountaineers have now won three straight matches and nine consecutive sets. EOU had a team hitting percentage of .290 in the victory, while Montana Western was at .128. Eastern had a 44-21 kill advantage and a 40-34 assist advantage. The Mountaneers also had 50 digs as a team.
“I'm very excited with the way our team played today,” EOU head coach Kaki Morehead said. “I thought after the long trip up earlier today, and not getting that much of a warm-up because we were line-judges before our match, we played well.”
The third set was a microcosm of the TESC and Carroll match. The Saints scored the first nine points of the frame as well as the last nine points of the frame to cruise to a 25-5 set three win. Carroll hit .321 in the final set, putting up nine kills with no errors on 28 attempts. The Geoducks handed the Saints 12 points on errors, scoring just five kills on 35 attacks to hit -.200 for the frame.
Nineteen miles away at the Dwight Merkel Sports Complex, the No. 21 Great Falls men’s soccer team recorded a 1-0 victory over Northwest Christian. The Beacons held their own against one of the better schools in the NAIA, but were out-shot 26-4 in the contest.
The lone goal came in the 54th minute when Danny Delgadillo took a pass from Manuel Espinoza, made a move past both a defender and the drawn keeper to tap in an empty-net score.
"We came out flat in the first half and had to find the intensity for the second half in order to get the win," Great Falls head coach Paul Zazenski said. “The boys worked hard to change some things after halftime and we looked better as the game progressed.”
Back in the HUB for the final two volleyball matches of the day, Northwest Christian grabbed a four-set win over conference-foe, Warner Pacific (Ore.), and Montana Tech edged Corban (Ore.) in the most-thrilling match of the day.
In a rare non-conference match pitting two conference mates, NCU and the Knights tied 10 times and changed leads nine times on Court 2. The Beacons’ Alyssa Dorr and WPC’s Rylie Engelson had an assist battle, as Dorr finished the match with 34 assists to Engelson’s 31.
The final match of the day was the only five-set match of the day. The match featured 33 ties and 15 lead changes between two evenly-matched teams. It was a unique coaching matchup as first-year head coach Brian Solomon picked up his second win in as many contests, and Tracy Smith returned to the Corban bench after a six-year hiatus.
Day one volleyball leaders were Great Falls’ Kelsey Vanuden with 21 kills, Alison Lunde of Montana Tech had 41 assists, Tech’s Kimmy Kavran finished with 32 digs, and Northwest Christian’s Janel Fetters had six total blocks.
Day two opens at 10 a.m. at the HUB with Eastern Oregon versus Montana Tech and Northwest against Montana Western. Men’s soccer has a doubleheader beginning at 5 p.m. with Rocky Mountain College (Mont.). Live stats from all volleyball matches are available on CascadeConference.org.