College Place, Wash. – The Northwest Christian University Beacons were in College Place this afternoon for a match against the Walla Walla Wolves on Sunday afternoon. This was the second matchup between Walla Walla (0-18, 0-17 CCC) and Northwest Christian University (12-15, 5-13 CCC), who saw victory over the Wolves last weekend in straight set fashion. The Beacons would sweep the season series behind Natalie
Downes and Claire
Salness.
In set one, the Wolves would start off strong by building a quick 8-3 lead due in large part to their team defense in covering the Beacons various attacks. The Beacons would battle back, however, by taking advantage of Wolves errors in combination with perfectly placed seam shots on the Wolves side. The Beacons would put together an 8-3 run to knot set one at 11. The teams would go back-and-forth as neither team could extend a lead beyond two points until Outside Hitter Claire
Salness picked up a kill to extend the Beacons lead to three. The Beacons would continue that momentum en route to a set one victory, 25-19.
Set two would see a similar theme as each team would trade points while neither team could extend a comfortable lead. After a few Wolves errors, the Beacons would sit with an 8-5 lead early on, forcing the Wolves to take their first timeout. Coming out of the timeout the Wolves and Beacons would exchange points, however, back-to-back kills from Claire
Salness would extend the Beacons lead to six, forcing the Wolves to take their second and final timeout, trailing 14-8. The Wolves would respond out of the timeout by putting together a nice team-led 5-0 run, cutting the Beacons lead to one and forcing them to take their first timeout. The Beacons would respond out of the timeout and go on a 4-0 run before Wolves Morgan Doyle stopped the run with a block. The Wolves, however, could not build off that block as the Beacons would hold off a Wolves rally, claiming set two 25-18.
Set three would start off with the Beacons holding a slim 4-3 lead as each team would pick up kills from multiple players early on in the set. The teams would exchange points back-and-forth before the Beacons would reclaim the lead at 7-6 off a Megan Van
Marter kill. The Beacons would continue their momentum and extend their lead to 10-6, forcing the Wolves to take a timeout. Coming out of the timeout, the Wolves would strike first as
Camiryn Rice would pick up a quick kill. The teams would continue to go back-and-forth as the Beacons continued to hold onto the lead. The Beacons would take advantage of a few Wolves errors to extend their lead to 18-13, forcing the Wolves to take their second and final timeout of set three. After a few Beacon points, the Wolves would go on a 3-0 run and cut the deficit to 16-19, forcing the Beacons to take their first timeout. The Wolves continued to fight, attempting to claw back in the set with a score of 21-24, but failed to close the gap. The Beacons would drop the Wolves in straight sets (25-19, 25-18 & 25-21).
By the Numbers
WWU 29 kills, NCU 41 kills
WWU 26 assists, NCU 40 assists
WWU 54 digs, NCU 52 digs
The Wolves will have to flip the script quickly, as Corban University (16-10, 12-5 CCC) comes to town for a 3 p.m. match on Monday, October 29.
The Northwest Christian University Beacons will travel home and host the Oregon Tech Owls (19-2, 12-2 CCC) on Friday November 2 at 7 p.m. in the Morse Event Center in Eugene, Ore.