Box Score (html)
ST. PAUL, Minn. – The SWOSU Volleyball team won a school-record 22 matches and their first-ever Great American Conference Tournament Championship, but the Bulldogs historic postseason run came to an end on Thursday evening at the hands of Concordia-St. Paul, the top-ranked team in NCAA Division II.
SWOSU entered the postseason as a long shot to advance, playing in Central Region, which had 11 teams ranked in the final AVCA Top 25 poll. Their first-ever foe in the NCAA Tournament was a Golden Bear squad that is a national powerhouse, having won seven NCAA Division II National Championships. On Thursday night, Concordia-St. Paul was simply the better team as they defeated SWOSU 3-0, with set scores of 25-12, 25-11, 25-15.
"At times it looked like we were playing the number one team in the country out there," SWOSU Head Coach
Josh Collins said with a laugh following the match. "They're very good but I thought that our kids played hard and we had to adapt to things that we haven't seen all year. We played hard and we played with heart."
Concordia hit .532 for the match with 44 kills and 11.5 blocks, while SWOSU was limited to a hitting percentage of .070 and just 19 kills. The Bulldogs were led by junior
Carly Zak, who hit .318 with 10 kills to finish the season with 446 kills, three shy of the single-season school record. Zak – who became SWOSU's first-ever All-Central Region selection on Wednesday – concludes her third year as a Bulldog with 1,157 kills, the most in program history.
Thursday's match, which saw Concordia-St. Paul finish with 10 service aces, marks the final match for SWOSU senior libero
Kaila Lancaster. A four-year starter for the Bulldogs and the lone senior on the breakthrough team, Lancaster concludes her career with a school-record 1,785 digs. Lancaster finishes her senior season with 497 digs, the third-best single-season total in school history.
Kayla Hebert finished the final match of her junior season – first year at SWOSU – with 15 assists, eight digs, one kills and two service aces, extending her single-season school record for aces to 51.
Paige Holt put down three kills and hit .500 for the match while
Kelsi Schmidtberger and
Blair Dressendorfer each added two kills apiece.
One major difference in the match was at the net, where CSP finished with 11.5 blocks while SWOSU was held without a block for the first time all season as the Golden Bears worked effectively against one of the Bulldogs strengths. CSP out-dug the Dawgs 35-26 and had 10 service aces, compared to three for SWOSU.
While the numbers sided with the Golden Bears in most categories, Collins saw plenty of positives that his team will be taking away from their first-ever NCAA Tournament appearance.
"We got kills against one of the best defenses in the country," Collins said. "We dug balls from some of the best hitters in the country. It was a short match but we did things well at times and we can leave here with confidence and we can also see that we have a long ways to go. It's going to push us to work hard in the offseason and it's a great experience for us."
SWOSU finishes their record-setting season with a record of 22-12, setting a new program-best for single-season wins by eight. The Bulldogs are scheduled to return 12 players heading into next season, including five juniors and All-Conference players in Hebert, Schmidtberger and Zak.
