SYLVANIA, Ohio, and CAMPBELLSVILLE, Ky. — The Goshen College men's volleyball team played three matches in a 24-hour span this weekend, topping Lincoln University in straight sets while dropping decisions to nationally-ranked powers Lourdes University and Campbellsville University in a three-state, two-day, 970-mile odyssey from Friday afternoon into Saturday evening.
Friday night, Lucas Sauder paced the NAIA no. 13 Maple Leafs in a loss to Lourdes in Sylvania, Ohio, a suburb of Toledo; after a return to Indiana, the team left Saturday morning for Kentucky, where it blanked Lincoln and fell to Campbellsville in a triangular match at the latter school's Gosser Gymnasium.
FRIDAY NIGHT: LOURDES 3, GOSHEN 0 (25-15, 25-22, 25-18)
The Maple Leafs found success at the net in the second set, racking up 11 kills against 3 errors for a .229 hitting percentage, but the fifth-ranked Gray Wolves held Goshen to 11 kills against 11 errors combined in the other two sets.
Sauder accounted for half of Goshen's kills in the match, and those required 32 swings. GC's all-time leading attacker, Alexander Rabadzhiev, was held to 3 winners on 20 attempts. While Goshen outblocked Lourdes 7-2 and forced its host into 18 attacking errors, the Gray Wolves also nearly doubled the Maple Leafs' kill total with 43 winners among their 75 points.
Jeff Lam led Lourdes (4-0, 3-0) with 14 kills, 16 digs, 5 aces and 2 blocks. Ricardo Gehrke added 11 kills. Guga Heidrich chipped in 14 digs, 2 aces and 2 assists. LU hit .221 for the match to Goshen's .075.
Despite Goshen winning the first two points, Lourdes used two three-point runs and a four-pointer to take a 12-8 first-set lead. Three more three-point runs rounded out the first set on a Lam ace at 25-15.
The second set was the nip-and-tuck one, which was tied at the first three opportunities before Lourdes ripped off a 7-2 run and led by as many as 8 points. The Maple Leafs displayed resilience, climbing back into the set with four consecutive Sauder kills on Wahl assists, but a Gehrke winner at 24-22 doubled the Lourdes lead to two sets.
The hosts jumped to a 5-1 lead in the third set and never looked back, going up 11-5 on back-to-back Maple Leaf errors. Goshen got the margin down to three points at 17-14 on a Rabadzhiev winner set up by a Wahl set off Nick Yutzy's serve, but that was the last time GC would win a point on its own serve.
SATURDAY AFTERNOON: GOSHEN 3, LINCOLN 0 (25-13, 25-14, 25-11)
Four hundred eighty-five miles and 17 clock hours later, Goshen showed off its depth in a non-conference victory over a Chicagoland Collegiate Athletic Conference foe on a neutral floor. The Lynx finished underwater for the match, accumulating more errors than winners on the strength of six Goshen blocks. GC (4-2) hit .333 or better in every set and almost .400 for the match.
Wahl led all players with 8 digs in addition to his usual role with 23 assists, and a match-high 4 aces — a category Goshen led 10-1 — didn't hurt either. Rabadzhiev had a match-high 8 kills, Sauder chipped in 5 and Joel Plank had a career-high 5 as Goshen cruised. Rabadzhiev, Andy Bennett and Will Gaby all added multiple blocks.
Goshen opened leads of 7-0, 12-3 and 19-8 in the first set as all four of Wahl's service winners came in the opening stanza. The last seven points of the set came on kills from six different players, including Plank, Gaby and libero Brayton Yoder.
Lincoln led briefly thanks to a kill on the opening rally of the second set, but that was erased in a 12-4 Goshen run that included five points on Ian Fox's serve. The Maple Leafs limited the Lynx (1-7) to two points on their own serve in the set while GC got kills from Yutzy and Insee Akarapan over a final 8-4 run.
The third set was more of the same as Goshen went up 3-1, 7-4 and 17-8 after a five-point run on Wahl's serve. Bennett added three kills and Plank had two in the set, which finished with an 8-2 GC run and back-to-back Yoder aces.
SATURDAY EVENING: CAMPBELLSVILLE 3, GOSHEN 0 (26-24, 25-20, 25-15)
Fourth-ranked Campbellsville hit its way past the Maple Leafs to finish the season sweep, topping Goshen in straight sets at home after a road win that went the distance on Jan. 8 in each team's season opener. The Tigers fired off 42 kills in the match and held Goshen to a season-low 4 blocks while adding 8 blocks and 9 aces of their own.
CU's Rafael Cruz led all players with 11 kills to go with 2 aces and 5 digs while Ramon Matos added 4 blocks, 3 aces, 6 kills and 5 digs. Campbellsville hit .375 to Goshen's .133 as the Maple Leafs were led by 10 winners from Rabadzhiev.
Campbellsville won six of the first eight rallies to take apparent control of the first set, but that 4-point lead would be their largest. Goshen closed the deficit to one on four separate occasions and eventually leveled the score at 21 on a block by Fox and Rabadzhiev.
Kills from Wahl and Sauder tied the score at 22 and 23 respectively before Yoder's ace gave GC a set point to go in front, but Campbellsville ripped off the last three points to win the set instead.
The trajectory of the second set looked a lot like the first, with Campbellsville jumping ahead early and hanging on after a 17-12 lead. Goshen's first point on its own serve was followed by three more of the same, sparking a 4-0 run on Tiger errors to close within 17-16, but Jakob Zum Kolk's kill put an end to that and started a 3-0 Campbellsville run to make it 20-16. Four Tiger kills and a block in the next nine points ended the set.
The hosts never trailed in the third set: GC tied the score at the first three opportunities before giving up a 12-3 run to fall behind 15-6. While the Maple Leafs eventually answered with a 4-1 run, it came at the stage where they needed more than a few points to mount a comeback. Campbellsville hit .524 with 13 kills against two errors in the final stanza.
UP NEXT
Goshen kicks off a six-match week on Tuesday with a return to the state of Ohio as the Maple Leafs take on Mount Vernon Nazarene University in a Wolverine-Hoosier Athletic Conference match at Ariel Arena. First serve is set for 7 p.m.
