Pride men's volleyball starts road trip with four set loss at Dordt

SIOUX CENTER, Iowa - Playing their first road match in 20 days, the Clarke University men's volleyball team couldn't match the offense attack of Dordt University in a 3-1 victory for the Defenders on their home floor on Friday night.

After a tough first set that saw the Pride hit in the negatives and Dordt pull away for a 25-15 set win, no set for the rest of the match was won by more than four points as CU upped their efficiency but not enough to match a final match hitting percentate from DU of .280 for a 25-22 second set for Dordt, a 25-22 set win in the third for Clarke, then a Defenders match victory of 25-21.

Similar to other nights so far on the season, Justin Hernandez shined for Clarke as he had a match-high 17 kills while hitting for a .275 percentage while adding six total blocks, one solo and five assists, to score 21.5 points on the night, having a service ace as well.

Also providing a strong blocking effort at the net for CU were Tanner May and Paulo Simon as the middle tandem combined for nine of the team's 11 blocks as Simon had two solo blocks and four block assists and May added three block assists to his 10-kill night while hitting .389.

Dordt also had two members of their team with double digit kills in a 15-kill effort from Cade Schmidt then 14 kills from Andres Guzman as both players hit over .300 and had exactly six errors apiece.

Clarke men's volleyball will remain in Western Iowa for their weekend closing match against Morningside University on Saturday afternoon with a scheduled opening serve in Sioux City, Iowa of 12:00 p.m. CT.