September 6, 2016- The 2016 season marches on for the Concordia University Chicago Cougar Volleyball team. Looking to ride the momentum of a final match sweep of MacMurray on Sunday, the Cougars took to the court again today. Today the Cougars faced off against North Park in match one of the evening. It was a closely fought contest between the two schools, but a few North Park runs would prove to be too much for CUC to recover from, losing in four sets (19-25, 25-20, 26-28, 20-25).

In set one the Cougars fell behind early, passing and serve receive were the issues early. After a CUC timeout trailing 17-8 CUC continued to fight back. They went on a 5-0 run and got as close as 17-13 forcing a North Park timeout. The CUC attack fell flat after the timeout, and fell 25-19 in the set.

Set two the CUC offense came to play. Big swings came from Arendia Ruiter, Jaylynn Johnson and Sarah Smith that got the offense rolling. CUC and North Park battled early, but a few costly errors allowed North Park to pull ahead 11-7. CUC began their run there though. A three point run brought the Cougars within one and forced a timeout. The Cougars continued the run to make the score 15-11 before North Park could score.  A big kill by Nicoletta Crowley made it 17-12 CUC and the Cougars would not relinquish the lead. Big kills by Smith and Calista Chaltron kept the Cougars scoring leading the way with four kills in the set. , and Ruiter finished the set with a kill to tie the match at one set apiece.

Set three saw both teams pick up the intensity.  The Cougars fell behind early, but quickly battled back getting kills from Chaltron and Smith, coupled with an ace by Johnson. Chaltron broke the tie at eight with a perfectly placed ball and added another kill to make it 11-9. After a big kill by Ruiter, Mackenzie Kelty got in on the action with an ace, and continued her stellar defensive play to make it 14-12. North Park went on a run over the next few points and took the lead late at 19-18. With Crowley serving, CUC forced North Park into multiple attack errors to take the lead 20-19 and force a North Park timeout. North Park didn't go away, with two straight points making it 21-20 Vikings forcing a CUC timeout. The teams went back and forth into extra points. Raven Burns got the team excited with a big swing, and a block by Johnson got CUC within a point of victory in the set.  An attack error and a serve receive error cost CUC the set though 28-26.

Both teams would continue to battle into set four. CUC jumped out early forcing a North Park timeout, but the Vikings came back quickly after. The two teams continued to battle into the deeper points of the set. The Vikings took the lead at 16-15 but a good swing by Chaltron tied the set at 16. North Park jumped out from there. Back-to-back kills and a CUC error gave the Vikings a 19-16 advantage and forced a Cougar timeout.  Smith tried to get the comeback started, but the Vikings would have all of the answers taking the final set 25-20 and the match 3-1.

Chaltron led the Cougars with 13 kills followed by Ruiter with 11 and Smith with eight. Crowley had 33 assists on the match. CUC struggled to get the attack going finishing with just a .104 attack percentage.
 
The Cougars will turn around and take on North Central at approximately 7:15pm.