KERRVILLE, Texas — The Southwestern University Pirates volleyball team dropped a pair of matches on the second day of a four-match conference play, losing to St. Thomas in five sets and Trinity University in three.
"We had two high-value learning battles today and did a lot of good things in high pressure situations," Head Coach Don Flora said. "We'll need to truly dig into the learning from today. We have a team that will always battle and for that, we are proud of who we are becoming each day."
Southwestern vs. St. Thomas (21-25, 25-19, 20-25, 25-16, 10-15)
Both teams alternated winning sets with the Pirates making one too many errors in the fifth and final set with eight, compared to just five St. Thomas kills.
The Pirates made double-digit hitting errors in the first and third sets, both losses to St. Thomas, who had three player in double-digit kills led by Kaje Massenburg's 12 on a .289 hitting percentage.
Emma White had a high workload, scoring career highs in kills and digs with 19 and 29 on a .222 hitting percentage. Riley Brantley was efficient with 14 kills on a .243 clip with three block assists and two solo blocks for 18.5 points. Ellen McGown contributed 16 kills and 24 digs as one of three Pirates with more than 20 digs.
Ali Grona led the defense with a career-high 37 digs. Lauren Crabtree led thematic with 49 assists and also had 15 digs while contributing an efficient eight kills on a .375 hitting percentage.
Southwestern vs. Trinity (23-25, 22-25, 25-27)
The Pirates played No. 9 Trinity tough for three sets, taking the third to extra points, but couldn't overcome the duo of Annie Rose Leggett and Avery Tuggle, who combined for 23 kills.
Trinity blistered the Pirate defense in the first set, recording 18 kills on a .353 clip. Southwestern countered with five services aced in the set, taking a 23-21 lead on a kill by McGown but Trinity rattled off four consecutive points to take the set.
Southwestern struggled with hitting errors in the second set, hitting a match-low .078 with 14 kills on 51 attacks with 10 errors; committing three consecutive ones to end the match giving up another 4-0 run to Trinity.
Both teams played to a standstill in the third set with Trinity recording one more kiss and the Pirates ending the match with a serve and attack error.
Emma White led the Pirates with 13 kills (.222) and 10 digs. Grona had 21 digs.
Southwestern split the weekend to fall to 13-8 on the season and 6-3 in conference play. They'll travel on Thursday for the second match of the season against Texas Lutheran. Southwestern won the first match at home in four sets.
