EUGENE, Ore. – The Northwest Christian University volleyball team had a school-record 23-point margin of victory in the second set on Monday night and finished out a three-set sweep of Multnomah University, 25-14, 25-2, 25-15.
The Beacons started off a little shaky in set one, and Multnomah quick jumped ahead, 3-1. An 8-1 rally, however, capped off by a Lindsey Young kill, put the Beacons ahead 9-4 and they would never look back. Young was a perfect 4-for-4 on the attack in the first set as NCU hit .273 as a team.
The second set was never in doubt as the Beacons built a 15-0 lead on the strong service of Cassie Bishop. Bishop had three aces in the set and NCU hit a single-set season-high .421, never committing an attacking error.
Head Coach Mike Gaffaney said, “We tried to focus tonight on minimizing our hitting errors and that second set was good evidence that we can play error-free volleyball when we really work hard.”
The Beacons (6-14) went on to hit .171 in the final set, closing out a strong 35-kill evening that saw just 12 attacking errors and a .264 attack percentage, the second-highest effort of the season. Northwest Christian was led on the attack by Emily Miller who had a match-high 13 kills, hitting .310. Kayla Hansen (pictured) finished with seven kills and just one error, hitting .333. Tessa Greatwood had just five kills but finished the night without an error, hitting .455.
Whitney Hoff controlled the action for NCU to the tune of 19 assists, which pushed her to second-place on the Northwest Christian career assists list. She now has 796 assists in her two-year career. Bishop finished with a match-high 12 digs, along with 5 of NCU’s eleven service aces. Miller, Mercedes Leclaire and Bridget Marasigan each had two aces apiece.
Multnomah (1-20) was led by Zahra Jafarbay with five kills and eight digs. Kaitlyn Reidt added eight digs and four kills and Kari Anderson registered a team-high 12 assists.
Northwest Christian has now won consecutive games for the first time since October of 2008 and will look to keep their winning streak alive on Friday as they travel to face Eastern Oregon in CCC action. “It’s nice to have some momentum going into this weekend,” said Gaffaney. “I know we are going to play well and play strong. We want to finish the season with four or five conference wins and that can definitely start this weekend.”