GOSHEN, Ind. — The Grace College women's volleyball team hit its way past Goshen College on Wednesday night in a Crossroads League match at Gunden Gymnasium, winning 25-7, 25-16, 25-17.
Cassadi Colbert led all players with 9 kills for the Lancers (6-2, 6-2), followed by Anna Frey with 7 and Makayla Bell with 6. Madison Coles led Goshen (0-7, 0-7) with 5 winners.
Grace finished with 39 kills, 5 aces and 5 blocks among its 75 points, with Makaela Lochmueller factoring in all 5 blocks. Julia Nagy chipped in a pair of aces.
Coles registered 3 blocks as well to lead the Maple Leafs while Brielle Agnew had 2 aces.
Grace hit .684 with 14 kills in the first set, misfiring once on 19 chances. They came back to earth a little bit in the second, improving their kill total to 16 but needing almost twice the attempts to come away with a .389 clip. The Lancers finished with a .400 hitting percentage and Goshen checked in at negative-.022.
The visitors took an 8-2 lead in the first set before finishing the set with six- and nine-point runs to match the most lopsided set in which the Maple Leafs have been involved this season.
Each team took two of the first four points in the second set, but Grace used a 5-1 run to pull ahead and held its four-point lead out to 16-12. Three Lancer kills in a four-point span doubled the lead to 20-12, and neither team won more than one point at a time on its own serve for the rest of the set.
The third set started 4-4 before Grace ripped off five straight points and Goshen answered with three in a row to make it 9-7. The Lancers used another 4-0 run to triple their lead to 13-7. The Maple Leafs closed back to 19-15 on a Coles block and an Agnew ace, but Grace finished with back-to-back aces to end a 6-2 run as well as the match.
Goshen's road will not get much easier in the near future: a rescheduled match means that the Maple Leafs play defending national champion Marian University twice in the next week. The first of those matches is the next one to come down the pike, set for 7 p.m. Friday at the Physical Education Center in Indianapolis.
