If you didn’t see any volleyball team members on campus this weekend it was because they were hard at work playing two conference matches in Iowa. Play began Friday, Oct.10, at 7 p.m. against Cornell College.
Junior Terese Swords led the offensive attack for the Vikings with 11 kills on the floor. Swords was aided by freshman setter Lauren Ray, who contributed 13 assists. The Rams were hard on the attack with their aggressive hitters Diamond Boyd and Taylor Dicus, who added 11 and nine kills respectively.
Vikings freshman defensive specialist Cyra Bammer helped out by picking up 16 digs. In spite of their best efforts, the Vikings fell to the Rams in all three matches with scores of 25-12, 25-22 and 25-18.
“They have a very strong offense that we have not yet seen in our previous games. It is something that we have to prepare for when we play them again in the Conference Tournament,” senior Betsy Sorensen said. “They also have a very strong block that we were not used to. We are going to learn from the game and move on so that we can become a better team!”
The weekend was not over, and the Vikings had a chance to redeem themselves with their second conference match on Saturday, this time against Grinnell College. Again, Swords led the attack against the Pioneers with 19 kills. Sorensen and fellow senior Kayla Storm supported Swords by contributing 12 and 10 kills, respectively.
Grinnell was able to defeat the Vikings in the first match 25-20, but Lawrence was not easily silenced. They came back and won the next match 20-25. Despite this outstanding offense, not to mention Bammer’s 20 digs, the Vikings still fell short.
Grinnell’s combination of Margret Giles’s 35 assists and Claire Weidman’s 14 kills made them unstoppable. Grinnell won the next two matches 25-21 and 25-19 to walk away with the overall win of 3-1. This left the Vikings with a 3-2 record in Midwest Conference (MWC) play.
Junior Andrea Wilkinson added, “I would name Terese as MVP for the weekend. Not only was she able to get a lot of kills for us, but she was also able to get them at times we needed them most. In the Grinnell match, there was a time we were down by about 4 or 5 points, and Terese got at least 5 kills in a row to bring us ahead by 2 points. That helped change our momentum and bring everyone’s energy up, which helped us to win that set.”
The Vikings are away again this weekend to play Illinois College in another MWC match-up.