Pride split pair of matches to open Showdown at the Woods Tournament

ST. MARY OF THE WOODS, Ind. - Hitting the road for the first time this season, the Clarke University women's volleyball team was able to earn a win over Lourdes University after dropping their opening match of the Showdown at the Woods Tournament to the hosts St. Mary of the Woods College on Friday.

The Pride ended the day on a high note with a five set win over the Gray Wolves with the two teams trading set wins to final set scores of 25-15, 15-25, 25-23, 21-25, and 15-13 to earn their fourth win of the season.

Getting to a 4-2 record on the year matches the win total for the program that they had at the end of the last two seasons just six matches into the 2024 season when they finished 4-23 and 4-26 respectively in 2022 and 2023.

Senior Rachel Haubert had a bounce back performance in the day's finale, finishing with a match-high 12 kills ad Kortney Harms also had a strong overall performance with 18 assists, nine kills, and six digs over the five-set match.

In their weekend-opening match against the Pomeroys, CU was just narrowly defeated in extra points of the first set then the final two sets going the way of SMWC for a 26-24, 25-21, 25-21 sweep win.

Attacking efficiency seemingly hur the Pride the most as they didn't hit for higer than a .125 hitting percentage in any set and committed a total of 20 attack errors in three sets compared to the Pomeroys 16 errors and 40 kills for a final team hitting percentage of .279.

For Clarke, Maya Watters led the team in kills for the third-straight match as she finished with seven kills on 18 swings for a .222 hitting percentage while Brittney Mundell was most efficient for CU going 4-for-6 without an error for a .667 hitting percentage.

Rylie Bohanan had another strong performane on the defensive side as she would finish the three-set match with 22 digs, just two digs off of a top-10 performance in a three-set match in the program's record book.

Pride women's volleyball will round out the weekend with two more matches at the Showdown at the Woods on Saturday when they face off against Alice Lloyd College and Goshen College for 1:00 p.m. ET/12:00 p.m. CT and 4:00 p.m. ET/3:00 p.m. CT scheduled start times of each match.