LISLE, Ill. - The Carthage College Lady Reds extended their season-long winning streak to seven matches on Saturday, as the women's volleyball team capped-off a perfect weekend with a sweep of the Milwaukee School of Engineering before handing the number-one team in the country, Wittenberg University, their first loss of the season, 3-1.

"It was a strong weekend for the Lady Reds," said head coach Leanne Ulmer.  "We have played some talented, big and physical teams the past few weeks and we have come out on top. The girls were excited to play Wittenberg and very happy to hand them their first loss!  We played some terrific team defense with Luci Krenzke, Megan Behrendt and Mal Parsons leading us.  Our outside hitters Megan Behrendt, Shannon Kebisek and Luci our libero did a great job in serve receive all weekend.  Ellie LeCount was able to move the ball around and find some good swings for our hitters.  Rachel Kisten, Megan Behrendt and Megan Fallert all had a good match at the net.  Ellie LeCount was tough from the service line getting Witt out of system.  Katie Laio again this weekend had some key blocks.  Another strong weekend for us to build on going into the last week of conference play and the CCIW tourney."

The pair of wins on Saturday improves the Lady Reds to 22-8 overall on the season, while MSOE falls to 13-17 and Wittenberg falls to 19-1 in 2017.

Carthage 3, MSOE 0
The Lady Reds opened the day with a convincing sweep of MSOE in three sets, including a 25-10 third set win that saw Carthage use an 8-0 run to grab control of the final set for the win [28-26, 25-17, 25-10].

The Lady Reds recorded 11 aces in the win, giving Carthage ten or more dimes from the service line for the fourth time this year and the third time in October.  Ellie LeCount led the Lady Reds from the service line with five aces followed by Shannon Kebisek with three, Laura De Rosales with two and Mallory Parsons with one.  

LeCount dished out 34 assists in the win with Kebisek and Rachael Kisten on the receiving end of a majority of them, recording 14 kills and ten kill respectively.  

Parsons also led the Lady Reds with 12 digs followed by Luci Krenzke with 11.

Carthage 3, #1 Wittenberg 1
The Lady Reds finished the weekend much like they did last week with a win over a top ten team in the nation.  This time it was delivering the first loss of the season to undefeated number-one Wittenberg [25-20, 24-26, 25-20, 25-20].

The Lady Reds got double digit kill total from Megan Behrendt with 17, Rachael Kisten with 14 and Megan Fallert with 12 to lead Carthage in a match in which they outhit the Tigers .194 to .146, despite 28 attack errors.  

Defensively it was more impressive as five Lady Reds had ten or more digs against Wittenberg, with Luci Krenzke leading Carthage with 22.  Behind her were Mallory Parsons, Behrendt, LeCount and Kebisek with 18, 17, 15 and 12 respectively.  Katie Laio was the biggest force at the net for the Lady Reds, recording four blocks in the win.

The Lady Reds will conclude their 2017 regular season on Tuesday with their final CCIW match of the year at Wheaton before heading to Millikin University for the 2017 CCIW Women's Volleyball Tournament next weekend.