Manitou Messenger

Issue date: 10/3/08 Section: Sports

Media Credit: Evan Uribe Kristin Boyum '12 swats a serve against St. Catherine's. The Oles have lost three five-set matches in the past week.

The St. Olaf volleyball squad has forced matches to the fifth set in three of its last four matches, yet come up just short each time.

The latest five-set heartbreaker came Wednesday night when the Oles battled with first-place St. Benedict, a team which has won 10 consecutive matches.

The women traveled to Pella, Iowa over the weekend to compete in the Central Tournament.

St. Olaf opened with a 3-0 drubbing of Buena Vista University Friday. Senior co-captain Jess Levin led all players with 15 kills, most of which came from Kelly Prunty '11, who tallied 38 set assists.

Libero Alyssa Williams '10 led the Oles with 17 defensive digs. Kim Smisek '11 added 10 digs and seven kills.

The competition became tougher during the rest of the weekend, starting with the tournament host, Central College.

The Oles found themselves down two games to none, but stormed out to a 25-11 win in the third game. The fourth game went right down to the wire, but the St. Olaf edged Central 25-23 to force a fifth and final game to decide the match.

However, the Oles quickly trailed 5-0 in the final match played to only 15 points instead of the usual 25, and lost the hard-fought nonconference match.

Next, St. Olaf squared off with UW-Eau Claire first and the match, unfortunately, resembled the previous night's loss.

The Oles led 2-0 out of the gate thanks to a nail-biting 26-24 second game result. This time, the Blugold's dominated the third game and then eked out a 25-23 win in the fourth game. The tiebreaker game went 15-8 in favor of the Blugold's as St. Olaf narrowly missed winning back-to-back matches instead of suffering the two losses.

The women amassed 52 kills in the match, led by Smisek, Levin and Paige Olson '10, who spiked 10 in the match. However, the women struggled with consistency and hit just .068 as a team.

St. Olaf lost the final tournament match 3-1 to UW-River Falls. Jane Meyer '11, Levin, Smisek and Olson each notched double-digit kills in the match.

The Oles travel to Moorhead Friday to face Concordia in a 7 p.m. match.

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