Volleyball sweeps Midland Warriors 3-0 in semifinal match
Juniors Lily Psencik and Savannah Shelburne ring the bell for Concordia.
Photo credit: Maddy Peters
By Maddy Peters
Sports Editor
The No. 2 Concordia volleyball team completed an efficient 3-0 sweep of the No. 20 Midland University Warriors Wednesday evening for the Great Plains Athletic Conference semifinal match.
The team heads to the GPAC championship for the fourth year in a row against rival No. 1 Northwestern College, the single tick on the loss sheet for the Bulldogs. Furthermore, Midland was the team that bumped Concordia out of the national playoffs in 2023 with a rough 3-0 loss. Coach Ben Boldt, however, only sees it as one step further on the team’s national goal.
“It’s one more win in the GPAC,” said Boldt. “I think that this team has done a really good job of getting themselves prepared to play one match at a time. And you know, that’s all the things that we do is just a culmination of that preparation.”
Concordia took off running in the first set with a 7-1 run to put the Bulldogs ahead and forced Midland to burn its two timeouts for the set. The Warriors took points here and there, but the Bulldog advantage was too much for them to overcome. Concordia took the first set 25-17.
Second set saw much of the same with a 9-1 run for the Bulldogs to take hold of the lead. Midland had a 5-0 run to comeback at the end of the set, but Concordia held out to take a much closer 25-20 set.
The Bulldogs had a route in the third set going up 13-3 against the Warriors. From there it was smooth sailing to the 25-14 set and match win. Senior service specialist Ashlyn Wischmeier took the game with an ace serve.
The team had a consistent attack percentage throughout the game with .229 in the first, .233 in the second, and .235 in the third. Kills were spread around the team with junior Ashley Keck leading with nine, senior Gabi Nordaker and junior Kya Scott tying with eight and sophomore Ella Waters with seven.
“I thought it was one of the more complete matches that we played all year from an offensive and defensive standpoint,” said Boldt. “We hit well, we were really balanced on our attack, and we played really good defense tonight.”
Defensively, Keck and senior Becca Gebhardt finished with 11 and 19 digs respectively. Gebhardt even recorded an unusual backline kill. Nordaker led the team in blocks with three total and recorded the only two blocking errors for the game.
The offensive key was in the soft-touch ball around the Midland block which threw them off their game. The front row placed their shots well and put the Warriors in tough defensive positions.
“We always want to be aggressive,” said Boldt. “I think we talk a lot about being aggressive and approaching hard with our feet, but sometimes the choice is to hit an off-speed shot. So I think that we were seeing the court really well tonight, but we’re always going to try and be aggressive.”
Junior setters Lily Psencik and Savannah Shelburne finished the game with 20 and 16 assists respectively and received the honor of ringing the victory bell after the game.
The No. 2 team in the nation travels to Orange City, Iowa for the championship game against the No. 1 team Northwestern on Nov. 16 at 7 p.m.
