Aaron Walling / Sun Star
The Nanooks volleyball team lost two matches at home this week, with both matches being close contests in all but the third set. The Nanooks lost to the Concordia Cavaliers and the Western Oregon Wolves Thursday and Saturday night.
The Nanooks struggled with the offensive firepower of the Wolves in the third set of the match, losing 12-25. The Nanooks offense couldn’t figure out the Wolves’ defense. As they could only hit for .200 throughout the match compared to the Wolves’ .267 hitting percentage. It was this set that showed the differences between the two teams, as the Nanooks could only hit for .057. This killed the team’s momentum in the match.
“With the exception of our third set, I thought we did a good job of battling for every point throughout the rest of the game,” Head Coach Brian Scott said. “But in the long run, we’re going to learn from our mistakes tonight and get better from it as the season progresses.”
Some of the positives to take from these games was the stellar play by junior setter, Rachel Nichols. She continued to rack up big numbers for assists, as she had a combined 98 assists from the past two games. Something could be said about the future of the Nanooks through the play of the freshmen, as the Nanooks are starting to get more and more production from their young group. Kim Wong, Tatum Upchurch and Jenna Hickel have been playing excellent defense so far this season.
In the earlier match on Thursday for the Nanooks, they played a Concordia team in a tough 5 set match, with the Nanooks falling in the fifth set 15-13. The Nanooks won their first set in over three matches, which was against Simon Fraser on Sept. 23. It wasn’t until their match against the Cavaliers where the Nanooks won a set. As all 5 sets were back and forth affairs with no one giving an inch, The Nanooks just couldn’t finish off the Cavaliers in the fifth set.
“Even though we lost tonight, I’m still pretty happy with how we played because it’s been awhile since we battled like that,” Scott said following Thursday’s game. “The past three matches we haven’t seen that fight and it was really good to see it come out tonight. Really proud of how these girls fought for long periods of time tonight, we did a nice job offensively with our scoring, even our defense did well too. We played a really nice match against a really good team and we just came out at the wrong side of result.”
Wrong side was correct, as the Nanooks led in 6 different statistical categories. However, it was the errors that came back to haunt the Nanooks who couldn’t hold back either the Cavaliers or Wolves with their mistakes. As they had forty-eight errors in the past two matches.
The Nanooks now head to Northwest Nazarene (11-4) for a match on Oct. 13.