ORANGE CITY, Iowa -- The Bellevue University volleyball team fell to Northwestern College 3-0 on Thursday evening at the Bultman Center in a battle of National Tournament teams from a year ago. The match was the season-opener for the Bruins.
Northwestern improves to 2-0 with the victory while Bellevue begins the season 0-1.
The Bruins and Northwestern went back and forth early, sharing long rallies and a high intensity level. Bellevue led 5-4 before an 8-2 stint that saw NWC take a 12-7 lead. The Red Raiders kept BU at arm's length the rest of the set, pushing their lead to as many as nine in the midst of a 3-0 run to claim game point.
In the second set, BU led by as many as six points at 13-7 but a 5-0 Northwestern run cut that lead to just a single point. The Bruins remained ahead for much of the remainder of the set, even pushing their advantage to five (21-16) but the host side closed strong by scoring a 9-2 spurt to close out the set and take a commanding two sets to none lead.
After hitting .200 in the middle set, their best effort of the evening, the Bruins saw their attack slip back below the .100-mark in the third. Bellevue never led in the third set but managed to hang around long enough to trail by just one at 18-17 before NWC again closed strong by scoring seven of the final nine points to secure the sweep.
Eve Fountain led all Bruin attackers with nine kills, hitting .194 on the evening. Coree Lipovsky added eight kills on .150 hitting and Andrea Carson hit .214 with six kills.
Olivia Galas racked up 26 assists and 11 digs for a season-opening double-double. Anna Koehler paced the Bruin defense with 12 digs.
As a team, Bellevue struggled to a .112 hitting percentage, running into eight Red Raider blocks.
Northwestern hit .280 as a unit and out-performed BU defensively. NWC totaled an 8-4 advantage in blocks and a 42-40 edge in digs on the evening.
Emily Van Ginkel and Anna Wedel totaled 12 kills apiece on a combined .442 hitting effort while Lacey Reitz directed the Red Raider attack with 38 assists. Van Ginkel was involved in seven of Northwestern's eight blocks on the evening. Emily Strasser and Olivia Granstra both finished with double-digit dig games, tallying 14 and 12, respectively.
The Bruins will open conference play next Wednesday, Sept. 16, when they travel to Madison, S.D., to take on Dakota State University at 7 p.m. in the DSU Memorial Fieldhouse.
