Eagles Earn Road Victory
The Faith volleyball defeated the Union College Warriors in straight sets by the scores of 25-18, 25-18, and 25-19 this past Tuesday night. Leading the way for Faith was freshmen middle Taylor Pals with 11 kills and a .456 attack percentage. Defensively the Eagles were led by the freshmen back court duo of Cara Hodak with 17 digs and Maddie Kunz with 13. "We won and that is always good. We wanted to clarify our defensive positions and alignments which I am not sure the team would agree we accomplished. Hopefully, we can shore up our defensive transitions this week in practice in preparing for a very critical conference weekend," noted coach Lanny Nihart.
The Eagles started set one slowly with deficits of 5-2 and 8-6. They were able to take command of the set behind Pals key hitting and taking advantage of Warrior turnovers. Set two mirrored the first set both in score and ebb and flow. The Eagles started slowly but were able to find enough kills to stretch the lead and captured the victory. "We find ourselves our worst enemy at times during matches with unforced errors. We really need to diminish serve receive errors and ball control mistakes. Our next opponents all being on the road will take advantage and we will not have the luxury to give away points," stated Nihart.
The third set was the strangest of the night. The Eagles built a 15-3 before Union mounted a comeback outscoring the Eagles 13-3. With the Eagles lead diminished to 18-16, Pals again provided the spark needed with two consecutive kills. The Eagles captured the set 25-19 and the match behind solid serving and two overset kills.
The Eagles will travel to Missouri to take on MCCC foes Calvary University and Ozark Christian College and the chance to secure a second place finish. Faith will also play non-conference foe Arlington Baptist, currently ranked sixth in the latest NCCAA Top Ten poll. "We have a great weekend ahead of us. We can solidify ourselves with a good conference finish against two good opponents on the road and take on a top ten team. This is a critical point of our season as the results will not only affect our seeding for the MCCC Conference Tournament next week, but give us an indication of how competitive we really can be as well," noted Nihart.
The Union non-conference win evens the Eagles overall season record at 9-9 and entering conference play this Friday the Eagles stand at 4-2.