Sept. 23, 2016 - Friday afternoon began a busy weekend of volleyball competition for the Concordia-Chicago Cougars with four teams from the Northern Athletics Collegiate Conference and four from the Iowa Intercollegiate Athletics Conference in a round-robin of cross-conference play hosted by Benedictine University.

Concordia's first matchup came against Luther College, who entered play with a 9-4 record. The Cougars fought hard but came up short in the end by scores of 14-25, 24-26 and 17-25.
In set one, the teams exchanged points and leads until midway through the first set when a 6-0 run by Luther staked them to a 16-9 lead. The Cougars were unable to make any sustained rallies after that as the Norse handily grabbed the opening set.

Buoyed by the net play of Jaelynn Johnson (Denver, CO/Vista Peak) and Raven Burns (Shorewood, IL/Minooka Community) early in set two, the Cougars hung tough with the Norse. Then, trailing 15-10, a service error stopped Luther's run before Alyssa Serewicz St. Charles, IL/St. Charles North) served up six straight points to give CUC a 17-15 lead.  Serewicz contributed an ace during the run while Burns knocked down a couple of kill shots. However, the Norse recovered and finally overtook the Cougars, taking a 24-23 lead and serving for set point. Sarah Smith (St. Ignace, MI/LaSalle) stalled the clinching for Luther as she put down a kill to tie things back up. However, the Norse turned back the Cougars' serve to get the point, and a CUC attack error on the next serve put set two in the win column for Luther by a score of 26-24.

Set three began with hopes of a comeback as Concordia bolted to a 5-1 lead, led by a pair of kills from Burns. Moments later, Austin Thompson (Morris, IL/Morris Community) got into the act with a couple of kills as CUC maintained a five-point lead at 9-4. Thompson later added an ace as the Cougars clung to a 14-12 lead, but the Norse's comeback was only stalled rather than halted. Luther scored the final five points to take the set and the match.
Thompson and Burns finished with seven kills each while Smith added six with two solo blocks. Setter Nicoletta Crowley (Romeoville, IL/H.S.) handed out 23 assists.

"I thought that after a slow start, we played better in set two and continued forward from our win on Wednesday," said CUC head coach Troy Campbell. "We got into more of a rhythm and executed some things against a good Luther team. If we can extend that kind of play over longer periods of our matches, we'll start seeing some results."

The Cougars (2-10) will return to action at 7:00 this evening when they take on Simpson College. The two teams met on the first weekend of the season with the Storm prevailing in four sets.