The MSU-Northern Skylights volleyball team traveled down to Great Falls on Saturday morning to play in two games at the University of Providence tournament. Northern would sweep both opponents, scoring a (25-21, 24-26, 26-24, 25-20) win over Ottawa University-Arizona before defeating the Evergreen State College (Washington) in a five-set thriller, (25-14, 22-25, 25-21, 20-25, 15-9).
In game one, Northern won the first set without giving up the lead, starting out on a (7-2) run. In the middle of the second set, Ottawa University-Arizona provided a (5-0) run of their own before the Skylights tried to fight back to no avail. In the third set, MSU-N came back multiple times, specifically from five points down in the middle and then from (22-19) and then fended off a mini-comeback and were able to close out the last two points tied at 24. Ottawa University-Arizona led (9-7) in the fourth set, but the Skylights responded, finishing (18-11) to close out the match.
Game two saw a similar start for the volleyball Skylights, who took the first set and dropped the second. Northern won the first set easily, but saw themselves down by as many as seven points in the second before mounting a charge that fell just short. They would turn that around and lead by as many as seven points to secure set No. 3. Northern got to within (21-20) in the fourth set, but were not able to withstand the last four points. The fifth set provided the wire-to-wire dagger early for the Skylights, securing four points before the Evergreen State College could manage one, racing to the six-point difference and winning the match. Emily Feller provided a spark for Northern, ending the match with a .500 hitting percentage, 18 assists, and 13 digs. Alana Graves followed up her Frontier Conference “Attacker of the Week” performance with a .407 hitting percentage in the last match of the day to go with a team-high 15 kills.
Northern (5-1) will hit the road once again, this time traveling to Arizona for the OUAZ Tournament next week. The opponents and times are listed on our website HiLineToday.com in the sports tab under “Scoreboard!”.
