Box Score

Coming off a strong victory over Concordia Chicago in its Homecoming match last Saturday, North Park nearly repeated the feat Tuesday night at Wheaton College.

The Vikings lost the match, 3-1 (18-25, 25-23, 15-25, 21-25), in College Conference of Illinois and Wisconsin volleyball action, but they sent a message that looks can be deceiving.

After NP lost the first set, it came back from a 22-18 deficit on the strong serving of junior Sarah Ray and a few kills from junior outside hitter Shelby Switzer to put together a 7-1 scoring run to finish off the second set.

“We came to life at the end of the second set and it carried over into the following sets,” North Park head coach Tim Walenga said. “We were getting some good looks and Elise (Ervum) and Sarah (Ray) did an excellent job at the serving line to give us the momentum.”

In the third set North Park opened with a 2-1 lead on the service of junior Julia Bakken and pulled out to a 10-5 advantage at one point. But Wheaton regrouped to overcome the deficit, and opened up a 10-1 scoring run of its own to finish off the set.

“We lost our rhythm a little bit in that third set and it hurt us,” Walenga said. “We started to get it back once we started the fourth set, but things went a little south.”

NP opened the fourth set playing Wheaton point-for-point through the first 12 points of the set and even pulled ahead 7-6 after a Wheaton net violation, but the Thunder broke away by turning the deficit into a 14-7 advantage. At 19-9, North Park was able to close the gap down to 24-20 by scoring 11 of the game's next 16 points, but Wheaton ended the match on a kill.

North Park (6-14, 0-6) returns to action this weekend when it competes in the Elmhurst College Invitational beginning Friday at 4 p.m.