LEWISTON, Idaho – After battling through the ringer that is the Cascade Collegiate Conference (CCC), the No. 8-ranked Corban University Women's Volleyball team was able to finally breathe a sigh of relief this evening following their dramatic five-set road victory over Lewis-Clark State College, as the Warriors clinched a share of their CCC regular season championship for the first time since 2021 after completing a 19-3 run through the NAIA's most competitive conference for the varsity sport. A balanced offensive attack allowed the visiting Warriors (23-4, 19-3) to hold off a near reverse sweep by the hometown Warriors (15-12, 12-10) for the second time this season thanks to five different student-athletes in double-digits for kills.
"As the regular season wraps up, I couldn't be prouder of our team for finishing strong with a hard-fought victory in five sets on the road, securing a shared conference championship in the process," Warriors' head coach Kim McLain shared earlier tonight. "We played with great focus in the first two sets, but as the match progressed, we struggled with passing and made too many unforced errors. However, our resilience fought through, and this experience will only make us stronger as we look forward to the journey ahead in postseason play."
With their previous matchup having been stretched to five sets in Salem earlier this season, Lewis-Clark State knew they had the potential to knock off Corban if they played with discipline during the Idaho based Warriors' senior day match, especially after jumping out to a 10-4 lead in the opening set and creating early tension for Coach McLain and her staff knowing they just needed one more win to clinch their first conference championship in a three-year span.
Trailing 18-15 later in the first set, the depth and balanced play style by the Navy and Gold allowed the visiting Warriors to rattle off six-straight points and flip a three-point deficit into a three-point lead following an LC State attacking error. Despite back-to-back Corban attacking errors that saw Lewis-Clark pull within a single score, junior opposite hitters Gracie Boeder and Makayla Roginski bounced back-to-back kills, followed by a free ball kill by senior middle blocker Allyson Reid to earn their team set point that would eventually finish with another kill by Reid at 25-21.
Much like the opening period, neither team was willing to budge throughout the second set, with the largest lead being represented by three points and led to a 23-al draw that sophomore outside hitter Kendra Bittle broke with a kill set up by junior setter Abby Guindy. LC State knotted the set at 24 points apiece on a service error by the Navy and Gold, yet Bittle took to the sky once again for point 25 and an unforced attacking error by Lewis-Clark State gave Corban the set at 26-24.
The Lewiston Warriors would complete exactly what was done to them over the first two sets in the third set played tonight, as they trailed 22-20 and reversed the tides to avoid the home sweep thanks to five-consecutive points, forcing a fourth period to be played via their 25-22 set win. With the momentum now on the LC State sideline, the Navy and Gold were able to hold tight with Lewis-Clark to a single point deficit at 15-14 in the fourth yet would stall offensively to allow the motivated Warriors to end the set on a 10-4 run and push their match to a fifth and final winner-take-all set.
In their seventh five-set match of conference play and second against Lewis-Clark State, the visiting Warriors demonstrated their late game experience by scoring four of the first five points in the fifth set and pressure LC State into an early timeout situation and provided them with the cushion they needed to basically exchange points back-and-forth over the remainder of the set to take the match 15-11 and celebrate their regular season title in style at the P1FCU Activity Center among Warrior Nation attendees that traversed the nearly 400-mile journey to northwestern Idaho.
Sophomore outside hitter Emma Bischoff led the Navy and Gold with 14 kills and added 16 digs in the backcourt for her eleventh double-double performance on the year and eighth in CCC action. Regarding double-double outings, Guindy (26 assists, 14 digs) and sophomore setter Nadeiah Howard (26 assists, 16 digs) registered their sixth and third double-doubles of the season, respectively, in their nearly identical outputs while commanding Corban's potent offensive scheme.
Joining Bischoff in the double-digit kill counts this evening was Bittle (13), Roginski (12), Boeder (11) and Reid (11) who all had efficient performances by attacking over .200 on the day, while Bischoff made up for her miscues at the net with a game-high three aces at the service line, which pushes her over Bushnell University's Amyah Semau by a single ace for the conference lead on the final day of the regular season. Assisting Bischoff in the backcourt was senior libero Marissa Uehara who dug up the team-high mark in digs with 18 through five sets played.
The CCC leader in kills, LC State outside hitter Juliauna Forgach Aguilar, added 23 more kills tonight to complete the 2024 regular season with 463 kills and lead the next highest attacker in the conference by nearly 70 while averaging over 12 attempts per set. Middle blockers Abby Beaton and Karissa Lindner provided Aguilar with ten and nine kills of offensive support, respectively. Setter Esther Kailiponi secured a double-double performance with a game-high 28 assists and 17 digs, while libero Natany Felix Guimaraes protected the backcourt with the game-best mark of 23 digs.
With all three of the CCC regular season co-champions having split their matchups against each other and all having just one shared loss to No. 23-ranked College of Idaho, the tiebreaker to determine the conference tournament host, first of two automatic qualifiers, and tourney seeding was decided using percentage of sets won against the three top teams. No. 3-rankedd Eastern Oregon University came out on top of the tiebreaker at 52.94% (9-of-17), just barely ahead of No. 7-ranked Southern Oregon University at 52.63% (10-of-19), while the Warriors just candidly played too many five set matches and suffered a three-set sweep that saw them win 44.44% (8-of-18) of their sets played, resulting in the third overall seed for Corban, their lowest seeding in a five-year window.
The 2024 CCC Tournament will begin on Tuesday, November 12th with a pair of play-in contests between LC State and Oregon Tech, along with C of I and Walla Walla University. As the No. 3-seed, Corban will serve as the home team in the first of two quarterfinal matchups against the lowest remaining seed following the play-in round, which will see the Warriors next in action on Friday, November 15th at Quinn Coliseum in La Grande, looking to advance to the conference semifinal round later that day and potentially, conference championship match for the fifth-consecutive season. More information on the Warriors' quarterfinal opponent will be made available on the Corban Athletic website following the Tuesday play-in matches.
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