FORT WAYNE, Ind. -- Struggling to find its offense on the day, the University of St. Francis women's volleyball team was dealt a pair of losses on Saturday following a duo of setbacks to St. Ambrose University (Iowa) and Grace College (Ind.). The two losses left the Fighting Saints (1-6) without a win in their four matches over the weekend at the Liz Lykowski Memorial Tournament.
St. Ambrose def. USF (25-17, 25-19, 25-22)
St. Ambrose (2-5) scored eight of the first 10 points of the first set and led 15-5 before the Saints went on a 12-4 run to cut the deficit to two at 19-17, but the Bees would pull away late on a 5-0 run to close out the set with a final score of 25-17.
In Set 2, St. Ambrose again took the early lead after scoring five of the first six points of the stanza. The Saints retaliated by spreading the offense with kills from
Alyssa Teske,
Aubrey Phillips,
Kennedy Walker and
Sarah Schmidt to rally the score to a two-point shortfall at 11-9, but the SAU front line proved to be too much for the Saints to handle as the Bees accounted for 10 kills within their remaining 14 points to close the set out with the 25-19 win.
Set 3 saw St. Francis leading 18-12 until the Bees went on an 8-3 run to cut USF's advantage to just one point at 21-20. A subsequent attacking error from SAU would give the Saints their final point, but St. Ambrose returned with a kill on the next possession followed by four more straight points to earn the sweep with the 25-22 victory.
Teske led the Saints with 10 kills, while Phillips finished with six kills and five block assists. Walker (10) and
Landry Hall (20) combined for 30 assists as USF hit .112 in the loss.
Maura Babuskow anchored the St. Francis defense with a match-high 10 digs.
Grace def. USF (25-18, 22-25, 25-17, 25-14)
Grace (14-2) took the first set of the match, winning a back-and-forth battle over the Saints. After showcasing a slow start, USF rallied back to come to within four points at 16-12, until four straight points pushed the Lancers ahead 20-12. Despite a number of long late rally efforts from USF, Grace would finish the first set capturing five of the remaining 11 rallies to win 25-18.
St. Francis responded in the second set, winning the battle by a 25-22 score. The two teams traded points throughout the first 26 rallies of the game until the Lancers took advantage of three straight USF attacking errors to jump ahead 16-13, forcing the Saints to take a timeout. USF then worked themselves back to knot the game at 21-21 before exploding for three kills after a Grace error to secure the win. The scoring surge was aided with kills from Phillips,
Delani Kirstein and a thundering kill from Teske for the final point fueling the Saints to a 25-22 edge.
Things looked promising for the Saints early in the third set as USF trailed by just one point (16-15) midway through the frame. The fun would come to a screeching halt, however, as the Lancers got back in sync and captured the next six rallies to help balloon their lead to a 22-15 clip, eventually ending with a 25-17 victory.
Hoping to turn things around after its third-set defeat, St. Francis began Set 4 strong, but was unable to keep up with Grace down the stretch. A one-point deficit (8-7) slowly turned into an error riddled 14-8 deficit. The Saints were able to slow down the Lancer attack after registering four kills and a block over the next nine rallies, but they would get out-scored 7-1 over the final eight points of the night to finish the set with a 25-14 defeat and end the four-set contest.
St. Francis recorded a .070 hitting percentage in the loss on its 171 attacks compared to Grace's .252 mark. Along with
Emma Rodriguez's eight, Schmidt, Kirstein and Teske were all second in line with five kills for USF. Hall was the front-runner in assists (20).
Abby Sippel rang up a match-high 15 digs from her libero position.
Up Next
St. Francis has two days of rest before it returns to action on Tuesday, Sept. 8. The Saints will be at home to take on Saint Xavier University in their second Chicagoland Collegiate Athletic Conference contest of the year. The match is slated to begin at 7 pm in the Sullivan Center.
You can keep up with everything happening around USF Athletics on X @USFSaints.
