#4 concordia-st. Paul (18-2, 8-1 nsic) set a match record (three games), recording 15 service aces in a sweep of minnesota, crookston (4-14, 2-6 nsic) on tuesday evening at the gangelhoff center in st. Paul, minn. The bears won by scores of 30-14, 30-17, 30-11 in a match that took just under an hour.

the bears fell just one ace shy of their school record for any length of match, nearly equaling their 2002 totals from their sept. 6 match against nw missouri state and their sept. 7 match against lock haven, when they drilled 16 aces in each match. The nw missouri state match went five games while the lock haven match went four.

freshman rachel knutsen posted a team-high five aces while fellow freshman krista erickson added four. whitney meierotto, who leads the team in aces on the season with 43, notched three while mary slinger had two and maria steinhagen had one.

sophomore setter maggie mcnamara, who is back in the ncaa division ii assist lead, recorded 38 assists and set a golden bear offense that hit .456. Five players recorded at least eight kills with three in double-figures in a balanced attack. As a team, concordia had 51 kills in 90 attempts with 10 errors.

leading the attack was steinhagen with 13 kills while kate bennett added 11. Steinhagen and bennett each hit .647 in 17 attempts, steinhagen had two errors while bennett was error-free. Meierotto was the third bear in double-figures with 10 kills.

on defense, six players had at least four digs in the match led by slinger's nine. Concordia recorded eight blocks while umc had just three. Three golden bears had four blocks, mcnamara, steinhagen and emily palkert while sadie kessler contributed three.

the bears held umc to a .043 hitting pct. For the match with just 23 kills in 92 attempts with 19 errors. Umc had just 27 digs while concordia only needed 38 to stifle the golden eagle offense.

concordia returns to action this weekend when they take on msu moorhead on saturday, october 6 at 4:00 p.m.

box score - csp 3, um crookston 0