ST. PAUL, Minn. – The No. 5 Concordia-St. Paul volleyball team (10-3, 5-1 NSIC) battled back from a 2-1 deficit to defeat No. 13 St. Cloud State (9-5, 3-3 NSIC) in five sets on Saturday afternoon at the Gangelhoff Center. The win marked the 700
th career victory for Head Coach
Brady Starkey.
Starkey now holds an all-time coaching record of 700-100 at Concordia. He is just the 28
th coach in Division II history to reach the 700-win milestone.
Concordia secured a comfortable 25-17 win in the opening set, but the Huskies bounced back with back-to-back set wins to take a 2-1 lead in the match. The Golden Bears evened the match with a 25-22 win in set four and finished strong with a 15-10 win in set five.
Junior
Makenna Nold led all players in the match with 20 kills, also contributing eight digs and four block assists for a total of 23 points.
Sophomore
Kaelyn Snoozy logged her fifth double-double of the season with a 14-kill, 13-dig effort, also chipping in three blocks and an ace. Junior
Kelsey Cooper was just behind her with 13 kills on a match-high .367 hitting.
Julia Gordon and
Mehlayna Straub added nine kills each, with Straub also coming through defensively with a match-high seven total blocks.
Freshman
Abby Rolbiecki led the Golden Bears with 20 digs, crossing the 20-dig threshold for the first time in her young career. Concordia's two liberos,
Josie Tingelhoff and
Marta Leeland, added 14 and 12 digs, respectively.
At setter,
Audrey Waterman logged her second-highest assist total of the season with 31, also contributing five digs.
Reagan Hickey added 28 assists and four digs.
As a unit, the Golden Bears hit at a .201 clip with 65 kills while limiting the Huskies to .153 hitting with 53 kills. Concordia also had an 85-79 edge in digs. The Huskies finished with a 12-8 advantage in blocks.
In the opening set, the Huskies took control with an early six-point run that gave them a 7-3 lead. Shortly after, with St. Cloud State leading 15-11, the Golden Bears turned the tables with a run of 10 consecutive points on the serve of Rolbiecki to take a 21-15 lead on the way to a 25-17 win.
The Golden Bears looked poised to take a 2-0 lead in the match as they held a 19-14 lead late in set two, but the Huskies rallied with eight of the next 10 points to take a 22-21 lead of their own. Three ties followed, but the Huskies closed it out with two straight points to break a 25-25 tie and even the match at one apiece.
Following a third set that saw the Huskies pull away in the middle of the frame for a comfortable 25-15 win, the Bears used a run of nine points over a span of 11 serves to turn a 14-12 deficit into a 21-16 lead in the fourth. SCSU made things interesting as they won three consecutive points to pull back within two at 24-22, but a kill by Snoozy secured the set for CSP to send the match to a fifth and final frame.
The Golden Bears never trailed in the fifth set, taking an early 3-1 lead and maintaining a narrow advantage for the remainder of the set on the way to a 15-10 win. CSP saved its best offensive frame for the final set of the night, hitting .348 with nine kills to slam the door.
For the Huskies, Abby Wachal and Shelby Kimm tallied 12 kills each. Laurin Hamann led all players in the match with 26 digs.
The Golden Bears will remain home to host Minnesota State (4-10, 2-4 NSIC) on Tuesday evening at 6 p.m.
