The Biola Eagles volleyball team flew to Nebraska for the Bill Marshall Volleyball Classic, hosted by Hastings College on Friday and Saturday. Day one of the competition concluded with Biola adding two lines to their loss column, as they fell to the host Hastings Broncos, as well as Grand View University. Biola moves to 4-4 on the season, heading into day two of the tournament.
The match against Hastings ended in a 3-0 loss for Biola, their first time on the receiving end of a shutout since the 2013 NAIA National Championship match against Texas-Brownsville. The Eagles simply got outplayed by the Broncos, who started off with a brutal .480 hitting percentage in the first set and finished with a .308 percentage over the three sets.
Biola, on the other hand, finished with .123, their lowest hitting percentage of the season so far. The Eagles also got out-blocked, 9-3 in favor of the Broncos.
The outside hitters for Biola — sophomore Hannah van Warmerdam and freshman Brooke Watts — led the way on offense, compiling nine and eight kills respectively. Sophomore opposite Karly Dantuma contributed six of her own and only committed one error for a team-best hitting percentage of .357.
The second match of the day for Biola also ended in defeat, but was much closer, as it took the full five sets to decide the victor. The Eagles and Grand View mirrored each other in the first two sets, with Biola taking the first 25-22 and Grand View winning the second with the same score.
Biola then won the third game 25-17, and were poised to take the fourth, but Grand View kept rallying back until they finally won 29-27, forcing a deciding fifth set. Biola unfortunately came up just short in the fifth, losing 15-12 in the nail-biter match.
Van Warmerdam again led the way for Biola in kills, adding 21 to boost her team-best season number to 108. Watts tallied 12 kills, giving her a total of 77 on the season, second-best on the team. Sophomore middle blocker Sierra Bauder finished with 11 of her own, the only other Eagle with double digit kills.
Biola will be back on the court again on Saturday as they face the defending NAIA National Champions, the Columbia College Cougars, at 8 am PST.
