OMAHA, Neb. – Coming off back-to-back weekends of long road trips, No. 6-ranked Midland University made the short trip into Omaha for the CSM Labor Day Classic. Opening play on Friday evening, the Warriors took on Northwest University inside the Lied Fitness Center on the College of Saint Mary campus. It was a straight-set winner over the Eagles, winning 25-15, 25-15, 25-20.
The Warriors took control of the opening set from the jump, going on a four-point run that grew into an 11-4 lead. After exchanging a few short rallies, Midland used another four-point run to go up 18-8. Down the stretch, Northwest tried to respond but could not stop the inevitable as the Warriors won 25-15.
Midland hit .154 for the set as it was led by Lauren Jones who had 6 of the team’s 12 kills. Northwest was plagued on the attack with eight hitting errors, three of which were into the block of the Warriors’ defense.
Set two saw the two sides trade points through the early stages. After ties at five, six, seven, and eight a side, Midland scored five of the next six points to get some distance. The separation grew as another 5-1 run put the Warriors up 18-11. Closing out the set, Midland got kills from Claire Johnson and Brooklynn Snyder and took the second, 25-16.
The Warriors had their best hitting frame of the night with a .324 on the attack. The 16 kills were spread amongst six players with Snyder getting the lion’s share with 6 successful swings.
Looking for their third straight-set win of the season; the Warriors were focused in the third. After going up 10-5, their lead grew to 17-9 behind a five-point run. During the swing, Abbey Ringler had a pair of kills with a block assist alongside Jones.
The Eagles, who had swept their first opponent of the day, couldn’t get more than a two-point rally and were unable to force another set as the Warriors won 25-20. Midland hit .231 in the final set with 16 kills. Northwest hit its best mark of .031, with 8 kills.
For the match, Brooklynn Snyder and Lauren Jones led the attack with 13 kills each. Snyder hit .222 while Jones had a team-best .385. Abbey Ringler finished with 6 kills to go along with her 7 block assists. Jones added 5 block assists as the Warriors controlled the net with 9 blocks as a team.
Setting the attacks were Brena Macklin and Stella Kuehl. Mackling had 19 set assists while Kuehl finished with 17. A sign that the Warriors found success in each rotation.
In the back row, Midland had 55 digs defensively and added 3 aces at the service line. Mackling had two of the aces and added 10 digs. Delanie Vallinch led the way with 18 digs while Kailyn Scott had 8.
“I was pleased with how the team played tonight,” commented head coach Paul Giesselmann. “A lot of the stuff we were working on in practice the last few days, you can see the young players starting to execute better. I thought our team, starting with our serve, was really on tonight. You could see that by the number of blocks we had and by holding them to a really low hitting percentage. We’ve got two tough opponents tomorrow and we’re going to have to continue to get better and play complete games. We still had some stretches tonight where we made a couple of mistakes. I’m looking forward to seeing how our players respond against high-level opponents on Saturday.”
Midland (3-5) will face The Master’s (4-3) and No. 23 Providence (7-2) on Saturday as it wraps up nonconference play at the CSM Labor Day Classic. Match times are scheduled for 11:00 a.m. and 5:00 p.m. on August 31 in Omaha.
