BLOOMINGTON, Ill. – The Carthage College women's volleyball team's NCAA Championship run came to an end on Saturday night, falling in a five-set thriller to defending National Champions, Calvin College, in the Bloomington Regional Championship, 3-2.
Ending their year at 27-9, the loss snaps the Lady Reds' 12-match winning streak, while Calvin moves into the round of eight with a 29-3 record.
The match had a feeling much of the way their CCIW Tournament championship match did. The Lady Reds fell behind 2-0 early 25-16, 25-17 losses. But Carthage then flipped the match in the favor with wins in the third and fourth sets, 25-19, 25-21, to tie the match at 2-2 to force a fifth set.
Unfortunately, this time the comeback was not meant to be as the second ranked Knights from Calvin took advantage of the Lady Reds hitting errors in the fifth to avoid the upset with a 15-9 win to take the match.
As a team, the Lady Reds hit .162 in the match to the Knights' .223 which included hitting percentages over .300 in each of their three wins in the match and despite 61 kills to Calvin's 49, the Lady Reds' 31 attack errors were costly on the night.
Individually,
Rachael Kisten followed her career-high 20 kills from Friday with 18 on Saturday in the Regional Championship to lead all players in the match. Behind Kisten was
Shannon Kebisek with 13 kills and
Mallory Parsons with 12.
Battling through injuries,
Megan Behrendt led the Lady Reds with three service aces and added 13 digs, while being limited to two kills. The Lady Reds had seven kills in the match as
Ellie LeCount added two and
Luci Krenzke and
Abigail McGowan each had one.
Krenzke led the Lady Reds with 24 digs in her final match with the Lady Reds, raising her career total to 2,350 digs.
LeCount and McGowan split time setting as the Lady Reds moved into a six-two rotation, with LeCount turning in 35 assists and McGowan tallying 15.
For
Megan Fallert,
Rachael Kisten,
Luci Krenzke and
Mallory Parsons, the loss marks the end of their illustrious careers with the Lady Reds. Over their four years the Lady Reds won two CCIW regular season titles, three CCIW tournament titles, made three NCAA Championship appearances and advanced to the NCAA Championship National Semifinal in 2015.
