ST. PAUL, Minn. – Led by three student-athletes in double figures in kills, the St. Olaf College volleyball team won its fourth-straight match with a 25-20, 25-22, 25-15 sweep of Minnesota Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (MIAC) foe St. Catherine University on Wednesday evening at the Butler Center.
Junior
Lauren Rewers, sophomore
Summer Reid and first-year
Katelyn Lannom all reached double figures in kills, combining for 33 on the night for St. Olaf (17-5, 4-3 MIAC). The win over St. Catherine (9-8, 1-6 MIAC) was the seventh in a row in the series for the Oles and the 13th in the last 14 meetings with the Wildcats.
Rewers tallied a match-high 13 kill, Reid added a double-double of 10 kills and 15 digs and Lannom reached double figures for the third time in four matches with 10 of her own. Sophomore
Lexi Wall made it three-straight double-doubles with 41 assists and 13 digs, leaving her four assists shy of 2,000 for her career.
Junior
Haley Langeslag entered the match 29 digs shy of 1,000 for her career and racked up 24 in just three sets, leaving her five shy of the milestone. Sophomore
Emily Jarnigan joined Langeslag, Reid and Wall with double-digit digs, finishing with 11.
St. Olaf jumped out to leads of 4-0 and 10-5 early in the first set, but St. Catherine hung around, trailing just 21-20 late in the set. With the Oles ahead by one, back-to-back Wildcat attack errors followed a ball handling error to bring up set point and senior
Alison Curry finished off the set with a kill.
At the start of the second, St. Olaf surged out to a 6-0 advantage behind Wall's serve but the Wildcats used a run midway through the set to trim a 17-10 deficit to just one, 18-17, prompting an Ole timeout. Witih St. Olaf clinging to a 21-20 lead, back-to-back kills by Reid brought the Ole lead back to three and Rewers provided kills on two of the final three points of the set to give St. Olaf a two-set cushion.
After winning the first two sets with late pushes, the Oles hit .419 in the third set to finish the match at a .277 clip. Back-to-back kills by Curry capped a 4-0 run midway through the set, helping St. Olaf open up a 15-10 lead. From there, the Oles did not lead by fewer than four points, as Lannom had five of her 10 kills in the third.
Before wrapping up the regular season with four of its final five matches at home, St. Olaf travels to Duluth on Saturday, Oct. 13 to face the University of Minnesota Morris (2 p.m.) and the College of St. Scholastica (4 p.m.).
