Pride fall in weekend opener at Grand View

DES MOINES, Iowa - In their third-straight weekend road trip in the Heart of America Athletic Conference schedule, the Clarke University women's volleyball team dropped a three set match at Grand View University on Friday night.

The second-straight 3-0 loss for the Pride came in the form of a tight 25-22 loss in the first set followed by Grand View pulling away with 25-15 and 25-13 wins to move GVU to 5-3 in the Heart and CU to 2-5 in the Heart.

Hitting efficiency, or lack thereof, told a lot of the story in the match as the Vikings finished the match hitting .211 while Clarke ended at .034 including a -.143 third set that saw the Pride only record five kills and produce nine attacking errors.

Following a .083 first set with only nine kills, Grand View would produce higher kill totals in the second and third set to .300 and .276 sets as setter Jenna Bentz and libero Chevy Wagner-Chun spread the ball around to five different members of the Vikings with over four kills while the two primary ball distributors added five kills combined as well.

Bentz finishing with 23 assists and five digs while Wagner-Chun added seven assists with her match-high 16 digs mainly fed Sydney Beasley and Brooklyn Roder who both finished with eight kills with Ellie Dougherty not far behind with six then Kaylee Stalder and Reese Casey both had four kills as well.

For the Pride, Maya Watters would lead the match in kills with nine kills on 27 swings but five errors while Rachel Haubert added six kills on 16 attempts with a team-high tying eight digs as that outside hitting pair were the only front row players for CU to finish with a positive hitting percentage and more than one kill in the match.

Clarke women's volleyball will have a fairly quick turnaround as they head to Oskaloosa, Iowa for an 11:00 a.m. match on Saturday against William Penn University before starting a stretch of nine home matches of their final 11 matches of the season.