St. Scholastica comes back to win share of UMAC volleyball title

Courtesy: St. Scholastica Sports Information

DULUTH, Minn. – The St. Scholastica volleyball team dropped its first set Saturday afternoon to conference leader Northwestern College, but took the next three sets to knock off the Eagles in four and capture a share of the Upper Midwest Athletic Conference (UMAC) regular season title and the No. 1 seed in next week's UMAC Tournament.

The Saints came into today's match having won 21 straight sets, but the Eagles came out and took the first set 25-19. Northwestern hit .296 in the opening set, while the Saints hit just .135.

However, it was the Saints that came out with fire in the second set and got a couple of big points late to win 25-22. CSS had 17 kills in the set with just two errors.

CSS then cruised in sets three and four, winning both by a score of 25-17 to capture a share of the regular season title and the No. 1 seed in next week's UMAC Tournament. In the fourth set, the Saints had a .467 attack percentage, while the Eagles (26-5, 13-1 UMAC) had just a .069 hitting percentage.

Paige Hardy (Hibbing, Minn./Hibbing HS) recorded 16 kills to lead the Saints. Anna Zyvoloski (Sauk Rapids, Minn./St. Cloud Cathedral HS (Minn.-Duluth)) added 15 kills and a team-high 19 digs. Megan Windschitl (St. Cloud, Minn./St. Cloud Cathedral HS) added a career-high 11 kills to go along with a block solo and three block assists. Sarah Kurtovich (Andover, Minn./Andover HS) had 51 assists, her second-most in a match this season.

The Saints (24-6, 13-1 UMAC) begin UMAC Tournament play Wednesday night when they host the University of Minnesota-Morris in a semifinal match. The match will begin at 7 p.m. in Reif Gymnasium. The action can be seen live on GameCentral at csssaints.com.