Alverno College Athletics - Home of the Inferno

MILWAUKEE -- With both squads entering Friday night's match having yet to win a Northern Athletics Conference contest in 2009, the Alverno College women's volleyball team had hoped to give Milwaukee School of Engineering a battle to sever its winless streak. But the Raiders had other ideas, using a superior team hitting percentage (.302) to walk away with a 3-0 victory in Alverno's Reiman Gymnasium.

"The match tonight was very up and down," said Alverno head coach Crystal McClure. "We hit these mental blocks as a team and we can't seem to break them. I did see some improvements in some things that we've been trying to touch base on, so it's good to see that they're applying new skills every single time we play a match."

After the Inferno (0-25, 0-11 NAC) fell hard in the first set, 25-10, the home squad put together a better effort in the second set with intelligent play at the net and tough defense.

"We played smarter and served harder so they were unable to run their quick three set to their middle," McClure explained. "That's what we need to learn to continue to do - serve tough so that the other team has more difficulty getting passes where they want them to go. We got a little scared when it came down to crunch time at the end and missed out on our opportunity."

Alverno conceded that second set to the Raiders, 25-19, and couldn't recover in the third set. MSOE's Kassey Hoffman (Mukwonago, Wis.) served for 11-straight points to build a 16-6 lead that turned into a 25-13 win, giving the Raiders their first NAC victory and second match win of the season.

"We got a lot of amazing touches in, and we also had a lot of amazing touches that didn't go in so it was give-and-take," McClure said. "They also had nine serving aces on us versus our two, so that just goes to show that we need to be more aggressive in the back row."

In addition to working on improving team skills, Alverno's coaching staff has also been grooming freshman right side hitter JoAnna Sobolik (Oak Creek, Wis./Parkway Christian) to become a more prominent threat in the middle. With two kills and four digs in addition to numerous strategically tipped passes, McClure was pleased to see Sobolik's hard work finally pay off tonight.

"JoAnna has been working really, really hard on the middle position for a little while now and we finally got to see it," she said. "Now she knows what I expect of her in the middle, and she also played great defense tonight."

Sophomore outside hitter Ashley Graham (Cuduhy, Wis.), freshman outside hitter Roxanne Kresmer (South Milwaukee, Wis.) and freshman middle blocker Sierra Miller (Dorchester, Wis./Colby) all topped the leaderboard at the net for the Inferno with four kills each, with Graham also putting up a team-high 10 digs in the back row.

Alverno will continue league play tomorrow afternoon, hitting the road to take on Rockford College.

"Tomorrow's match should be interesting," McClure said. "They've had a lot of ups and downs as a team and so have we, but the difference is that they've been able to get some wins out of that so we'll have to see what happens."

Match time at Rockford is set for 1 p.m. in Rockford, Ill.