MOORHEAD, Minn. – The No. 8 Concordia St. Paul volleyball team (13-4, 8-2 NSIC) began its stretch of five straight road matches with a sweep of MSU Moorhead (10-9, 3-7 NSIC) on Friday evening at Nemzek Fieldhouse.
The win marked CSP's 24
th straight win over MSU Moorhead, bringing the all-time series to 39-8 in favor of the Golden Bears.
Junior
Kelsey Cooper had one of the strongest offensive matches of her career, setting a new career high for a three-set match with 15 kills on a match-leading .636 hitting percentage. Cooper also contributed three blocks and three digs.
Fellow junior
Makenna Nold was just behind her, finishing with 13 kills on .435 hitting to go along with seven digs, three aces, and three blocks.
Julia Gordon neared double figures with nine kills, and
Mehlayna Straub added six kills.
Leading the team in digs were
Kaelyn Snoozy,
Marta Leeland, and
Abby Rolbiecki, who each matched Nold with seven.
Josie Tingelhoff was just behind them with six digs of her own.
The offense was paced by setter
Audrey Waterman with 22 assists, while
Reagan Hickey contributed 17 assists.
As a team, the Golden Bears hit .336 with 48 kills and limited the Dragons to just .120 hitting with 31 kills. Concordia also carved out distinct advantages in aces (6-1), blocks (9-2), and assists (45-28) to help secure the win.
The Golden Bears looked to pull away early in the opening set with a 5-1 lead, but the Dragons made a push to cut the deficit back down to just one at 6-5. That story would repeat itself several times throughout the set, most notably with Concordia playing to an 18-11 lead before MSUM used a run of five straight points to pull back within two. CSP regained control with a three-point run of their own to go up 21-16. The Concordia lead never dropped below three for the remainder of the set, as CSP went on to claim a 25-19 win.
Tied at 5-5 in the second set, the Golden Bears put together a 10-2 run that put them up 15-7. That lead would never drop below five for the remainder of the set, with CSP going on to claim the 25-17 win to put them up 2-0 in the match.
Concordia took control early and never looked back in the third set, carving out a 6-1 advantage and continually expanding that lead on the way to a 25-11 win to complete the sweep. The set was punctuated by a run of six straight points for CSP on the serve of Nold that included three aces and a kill each from Nold and Cooper.
The Golden Bears will wrap up the weekend with a road match at Minnesota Crookston (3-15, 1-9 NSIC) on Saturday at 3 p.m.
