BUTTE, Mont. – The University of Providence volleyball team made history on Saturday night, winning its first Frontier Conference (FC) Tournament Championship in program history.
The No. 2-seeded Argos (22-9) defeated the overall No. 1-seeded Rocky Mountain Battlin' Bears (29-4) 3-1 in Butte, Montana. Headed into the tournament, the Battlin' Bears had not lost to a team that was ranked outside of the top 10, which included No. 7 College of Idaho, No. 4 Viterbo, and No. 2 Grand View.
No. 20 University of Providence 3 – No. 8 Rocky Mountain College 1
The Argos and Battlin' Bears traded points to open up the game to a 4-3 Argo lead. Rocky would then score four unanswered to take their first lead of the match, 7-4. The Argos battled back to bring the match back within two, 11-9, but following an Argo attack error, Rocky opened things up taking five straight points to push the deficit to seven, 16-9. The Argos stayed resilient as they slowly chipped away at Rocky's lead to eventually bring the match within one, 22-21. The Battlin' Bears were able to respond yet again as they tallied to kills to bring the game to set point, 24-21. The Argos were not going down without a fight and scored three of their own with a
Lauren Brown kill and two Battlin' Bears' attack errors to tie the match at 24. The two squads traded points as Rocky held set point at 25 and 26, but the hot hand of the Argos proved to be the winning ingredient as kills from
Ember Schwindt and
Isabelle Parker followed by one last attack error clinched the opening set in the Argos' favor, 28-26.
Rocky began the second set with three straight points, but three straight Argos' points tied things up at three. The Argos would then outscore the Battlin' Bears 4-3 to take their first lead of the set, 6-5, but the two squads would battle to seven ties as they worked their way to a 13-13 standstill. Rocky then took four unanswered points to take a 17-13 advantage. Both teams would tally three points to push the match to a 20-16 Rocky lead. Shortly after, the Argos capitalized after a
Melissa Gonzalez kill to score five unanswered of their own to recapture the lead late in the set, 21-20. The Battlin' Bears would tie things up at 21 and 22, but two kills from
Sydney Andersen and a service ace from
Averi Dyer clinched the second set for the Argos to put them one set away from a conference title, 25-22.
The third set opened up to a back-and-forth battle as the teams traded points to a 3-3 tie. The Battlin' Bears and the Argos would then trade three-point runs to eventually push the match to a 9-6 Rocky lead. Following another Gonzalez kill, the Argos outscored Rocky 4-1 to bring the match to a tie at 10 all. Two Argo errors and a Parker and
Lauren Brown kill would keep things even at 12. The Battlin' Bears mustered an 8-2 run to take a six-point lead, 20-14. The deficit proved to be too much for the Argos to overcome as they would outscore the Battlin' Bears, 6-5, but it was all Rocky needed to fend off an Argos' sweep, 25-20.
The fourth set proved to a historic moment for the Argos. Both teams battled with every ounce of effort that they could muster as they would even things at every single point to a 6-6 tie. The set would never be the same following the tie as the Argos scored four-straight points, three Shaver kills and a Battlin' Bears attack error to put Providence at a four-point advantage, 10-6. The Argos would never relinquish their lead for the remainder of the match as they dominated Rocky to outscore them 15-8 to close out the set and capture their first ever tournament title.
Shaver led the Argos offensively as she garnered 18 kills, hitting for .222. On the defensive end, Dyer was a beast on the Argos' backrow as she tied for her second-most dig performance of the year tallying 33 digs, while Parker and Schwindt were a threat at the net with four blocks apiece.
Paige Jensen and
Cydney Finberg led the Argos in assists, garnering 28 and 25, respectively.
Rocky Mountain College dropped to 29-4 with the loss and will almost certainly receive an at-large selection. The Argos were ranked No. 20 in the latest NAIA Volleyball poll, while the Battlin' Bears were slotted in at No. 8 in the country.
UP is now 22-9 this season and is guaranteed an NAIA Tournament appearance as they earned the Frontier Conference automatic qualifier with the win. They will learn their seeding, opponent and location of a possible NAIA first round match on Monday at 9 a.m. MST via the NAIA's Facebook page
here.
