Volleyball battles hard, comes up short

Sara Levering, Copy editor

The lady wildcats battled for a win on Friday evening against the Puget Sound Loggers.

The ladies dominated the first set 25-19.

The loggers struggled to get a handle on returning serves to the ’Cats.

In the second set, things turned around for the loggers. Coming from behind nearly the entire set, the Wildcats attempted to make a comeback but fell short 20-25.

Linfield struggled with some miscommunication throughout the game and fought a close third set, but lost 25-27.

The Wildcats coming from behind yet again in the fourth set rallied and answered with eight points straight to tie the game at 20. They took the lead at 22-21 and never looked back again to win the fourth set 25-22.

In the final set, Puget Sound jumped out to a quick lead 5-1. Linfield attempted to gain some momentum and caught up as close as 9-11 and fell the rest of the way.

On a side note, libero Courtney Uyeda, ’16, tallied 30 digs and three aces for the Wildcats.

Jamie Talbo, ’18, gathered 39 assists and Casie Gaza, ’17, had a dozen. Darian Stedman, ’19, had five kills and Caiti Barrie, ’16, added four more.

The team was defeated 3-2.

The Linfield Wildcats faced the Lewis & Clark Pioneers on Saturday evening. The visiting Pioneers gave the Wildcats’ offense some hard times.

Linfield again struggled to get a handle on communicating with each other as well as putting too much power into kills, which went out of play. Lewis & Clark, in turn, capitalized on Linfield’s mistakes.

Barrie had the team high for kills at six, Uyeda grabbed 12 digs, and Talbo tallied 13 assists. Linfield fell 0-3; 16-25, 17-25, 14-25.

Next up, Linfield faces Whitman (0-4 NWC) at 7 p.m. on Friday, October 2 and Whitworth (4-0 NWC) at 5 p.m. Saturday, October 3 in the Ted Wilson Gymnasium.

Linfield is now 1-3 in Northwest Conference play.