THUNDER BAY – SPORTS – Lakehead’s women’s volleyball team lost their first match of the weekend this afternoon to the Queen’s Gaels in straight sets. The final scores were 12-25, 11-25, and 23-25. The loss drops Lakehead to 1-17 with one match remaining in the season, tomorrow’s against the RMC Paladins. Queen’s improves to 13-6.
“Unfortunately we could not start the way we wanted to today,” Thunderwolves head coach Craig Barclay said. “By the time we started to play our game it was too late.”
The first two sets started with each team keeping pace in the first few rallies, but the Gaels exploded out to 10-5 leads each time. Queen’s put together a five-point swing in the early portions of each set.
“We gave away too many points in unforced errors,” Barclay said. “We need to clean up our side of the net to keep ourselves in the match.”
The Thunderwolves finished with 27 unforced errors, plus an additional 17 receiving errors. Lakehead’s hitting percentage as a team was -.041. Queen’s finished with 30 total errors and hit to a .241 percentage.
Rheanna Geisel was once more Lakehead’s points leader with 9, though Meghan Routier contributed 7.5 of her own. Virginie Franks added 3.5 points, and Rachel Sweezey finished with 3 points on top of 11 assists. Sweezey and Geisel finished with 7 digs each, while libero Ciara Zarn and Rebekah Hara finished with 6 apiece.
Queen’s was led by Arielle Palermo’s 13 kills, and Caroline Livingston’s 9.
The Thunderwolves finish their OUA season tomorrow against RMC, with the first serve going up at 1 pm.
