DILLON, Mont. – Phenomenal defensive numbers weren't enough to overcome an error riddled match for UP volleyball as the Lady Argos dropped its second straight 5-set match, this time 3-2 (18-25, 25-23, 18-25, 25-21, 17-15) to the University of Montana Western. The match was the first of Frontier Conference play for both teams, and UP opened up the conference season with a loss to the Bulldogs for the second straight year.
 
Before the match began, the teams got together for a moment that put a collegiate volleyball match into perspective. A little less than a week ago, UP sophomore defensive specialist Brooke Foth's younger brother was involved in an ATV accident that has put him in the hospital with severe spinal injuries.
 
To show support for Gavin and the Foth family, the Lady Argos brought warm-up shirts with #GSTRONG across the front. In solidarity with their opponent for the night, the UMW volleyball team also donned #GSTRONG shirts for warm-ups and collected donations to help the Foth family with medical bills.
 
After the touching sign of support, there was still a match to be played and UP came out on fire. The Lady Argos lost the first point of the match but then scored the nine in a row including 2 aces from sophomore defensive specialist Emily Stoker and 2 kills from freshman hitter Sydney Andersen.
 
UP didn't quite keep up that pace but maintained a comfortable lead for the rest of the set. The team's offense was clean and dangerous in that first game. While it required 51 attempts to get the Lady Argo's to 16 kills, those 51 swings also only resulted in 3 errors.
 
Somehow, the smart hitting from set 1, entirely disappeared in the second set. UP had just 10 kills and a frustrating 9 errors in 47 attempts. Despite those shaky number, the Lady Argos led through most of the set, and the match was tied at multiple times including 23-23.
 
In what was the first, but not the last situation in the match where both teams battled back and forth to earn set-point and the Lady Argos couldn't pull through.
 
In the third set, the Lady Argo offense flipped back to the good side of its Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde act and once again dominated the game. Instead of one large run at the beginning, it was a series of small runs in the back half of the set that set UP apart from the Bulldogs.
 
Junior outside hitter Korie Milan had a monster set, scoring 9 of her 20 kills in the match while only 1 of her 8 hitting errors came in the set.
 
Once again, the coin flipped to the other side, and all of the sudden, UP's hitters struggled to get the ball on the court before it left the lines. The set turned into a rally fest, with a staggering number of swings from each team. UP finished the set with 56 attempts while Western had 50.
 
Heading into the match, the Bulldogs were statistically far superior to the Lady Argos in terms of digs, with UMW libero Dylan Fowler ranking second in the nation in total digs and digs/set. That's not, however, how the match played out. UP finished with 5 more digs than the Bulldogs and both Stoker and Foth were every bit as effective as Fowler.
 
Unfortunately, their efforts were negated by 6 more hitting errors from the offense of UP than that of Western in the fourth set. Those 6 points were crucial in another close game that saw the Lady Argos within 22-21 of the Bulldogs before committing 3 straight attacking errors to close the set.
 
That loss brought the Lady Argos into familiar territory. For the seventh time in 2017, the team was going to a tiebreaker set. Comparatively, the Lady Argos of 2016 played just three 5-set matches throughout the course of the entire season.
 
In non-conference play, it was UP's ability to pull out wins in exactly those kinds of contests that had the team receiving votes in the most recent NAIA Volleyball Coaches' Top 25 Poll.
 
Western won the first 4 points of the tiebreaker, but the Lady Argos answered with a 4-point run of their own. The rest of the set followed that same pattern of UMW taking a lead and UP closing the gap.
 
A service error from Stoker looked to be the final nail in the coffin for the Lady Argos, making the score 14-11 Bulldogs, but the team refused to die. UP rallied off 3 straight points to tie the set and the match. The two teams exchanged points before two long rallies eventually resulted in Western kills to kill the match for the Lady Argos.
 
The Lady Argos put up the biggest individual and team totals in digs since a 5-set loss to Rocky Mountain College on October 22, 2015. Stoker led UP with 32 digs, while Foth wasn't far behind with 28. Those two each had set new career highs with those numbers and combined for 60 of the team's 119 digs. Fellow sophomore defensive specialist Olivia Snead had 22 digs of her own.
 
Unfortunately, all of that defensive effort was for naught in large part to UP's own mistakes. Spells of attacking errors and errors of other kinds have been a reoccurring problem for the Lady Argos, and the team had one of its worst such spells to date. UP committed 31 hitting errors, 9 service errors, 8 blocking errors, and 4 ball handling errors.
 
Milan led the Lady Argos with 20 kills while Andersen wasn't far behind with 18. The latter also led the team in hitting percentage, committing just 3 errors in her 40 total swings.
 
Freshman setter Ava Larkin returned after missing a few matches due to health issues and picked up where she left off. She led UP with 25 assists and posted her sixth double-double of the season with 15 digs.
 
The Lady Argos are 13-5 (0-1) on the year and will travel next to Billings, Montana to play Rocky Mountain College on Saturday, September 16 at 7 p.m.