Hastings College Volleyball // HC Broncos Athletics
CRETE – The Hastings College volleyball team dropped a tough five setter to Doane 24-26, 22-25, 25-14, 25-20, 13-15 on Wednesday night.
The Lady Broncos had set point at 24-22 in set one but the Tigers found a way to score the final four points of the set to go up 1-0 in the match. Doane would also win set two as things were tied 21-21 but DU made a quick 3-0 run to go up 24-21 and won the set 25-22.
Hastings would not go down without a fight and would build a bit of a lead in set three as Majesta Valasek and Grace Branson teamed up for a block. Then back-to-back Tiger attack errors put HC up 8-4. The lead jumped to six at 13-7 behind a kill from Valasek and two kills from Dacey Sealey. The closest Doane would get the rest of the way would be five points as Hastings easily won the set 25-14 and were back in the match.
Set four saw a tight battle between the two teams but Doane opened up a 17-13 lead and seemed on the verge of winning this in four. But Hastings made sure that didn’t happen.
Following a Tiger service error, Makenna Asher went out to Ilse Benne for two quick kills. Then went to the opposite side as Valasek hammered home a point before going right back to Benne to make it 18-17. Asher then picked up a back-to-back service aces and ended the 8-0 run by connecting with Valasek to go up 21-17 before the run finally ended.
Doane clawed to within two at 22-20 but a service error, an attack error followed by a double block from Sealey and Kaitlin Thiebauth finished off the set at 25-20.
It all came down to set five and the Lady Broncos were in a great position following kills from Valasek, Benne and Sealey to go up 10-7 but it would be Doane that would have the final say scoring the final three points of the set to win it 15-13.
Benne led the way with 20 kills while hitting .176 with Valasek finishing with 18 kills while hitting .241. Sealey finished with a season high and career high 11 kills.
Asher finished with a team high 52 assists while Miriam Miller finished with a career high 34 digs.
Hastings falls to 8-15 (3-11) on the year and will be back in action Saturday Oct. 28 hitting the road to take on No. 4 Concordia with first serve set for 4:00 pm out in Seward, NE.