Waukon volleyball team falls at home to Oelwein in straight NEIC sets

The Waukon volleyball team had its lightest week of competition for this season play out to a heavy result when the Indians hosted Oelwein in Northeast Iowa Conference play Tuesday, September 18. Despite battling the visiting Huskies rather close throughout the night, the Tribe netters ended up being swept by their visitors in three straight sets by scores of 15-25, 20-25 and 20-25.

The Indians matched their Husky visitors fairly well on offense, hammering out 28 kills to Oelwein’s 31 winners at the net, with the Huskies committing 16 hitting errors and the net Tribe having 22 miscues. Although Oelwein didn’t do much damage at the service line, with just a single ace serve, it didn’t do itself much harm there either, missing just two serves in a total of 74 attempts at the line.

The visitors established themselves early, jumping out to a 0-2 headstart before senior Brigid Berns rocked a kill off an attempted Oelwein block. The Huskies helped the Indians to two more points but helped themselves to even more to build a 3-12 advantage before the net Tribe rallied back a bit behind junior Alison Sherman’s serve, a kill by senior Mary VanderVelden and a pair of net winners by sophomore Margaret Wacker on both defense and offense to help pull the Indians within just a 7-12 count. Another 5-0 Indian surge was helped out some by Oelwein miscues and also furthered by another pair of Berns blasts and an ace serve by senior Ally Goltz to close the gap to just 12-14. Berns kept firing away to help the Tribe keep pace to a 15-19 tally, but Oelwein rode one final wave of momentum to rattle off six final points to secure the 15-25 Indian defeat.

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