CHICAGO, Ill. -- The North Park men's volleyball team played a dual on Saturday afternoon against Wisconsin opponents Concordia University and St. Norbert's. The Vikings would end up splitting the two matchups across eight total sets. With the 1-1 performance today, North Park now sits at 7-5 on the young season.
Match 1 saw North Park take on the Concordia Falcons. The Vikings got off to a slow start, losing Set 1 handily and then giving away 5 early points on service errors to start Set 2. However, NPU bounced back to take the second set behind key plays from Erik Bullard and Sam Robinson, with Noah Salazar shutting the door on a service run. The Vikings and Falcons then traded wins in Sets 3 and 4 to force a fifth set. Despite the momentum that NPU had built, a poor start again plagued the Vikings in Set 5 and put them in an early 7-2 hole. A small comeback brought North Park back within reach, but the aforementioned point differential proved to hold up by the match's conclusion, with Concordia taking the set 15-10 to earn a 3-2 victory.
The Vikings played much sharper volleyball in the second match, sweeping the St. Norbert's Green Knights by scores of 27-25, 25-7, and 25-23. NPU finished up with a .342 hitting percentage which was bolstered by an exceptional mark of .600 in their dominant second set. Beyond the attack, North Park successfully dug the ball 33 times compared to just 17 from the Green Knights, and they picked up 7 points on aces as well.
On the day, Vicente Cabrera led the Vikings offensively with 22 kills, splitting 11 evenly between the two matches, while Erik Bullard's 15 kills in the first match were a single-game high across both competitions for any team. The Vikings operated with a revolving door of setters across the two games, with Teddy Gedville leading the way with 34 assists in Game 1 while Alejandro Condoy (21) and Liam Miller (13) combined to reach that mark in the second match. Defensively, Gedville and Sam Robinson had 3-block performances against Concordia, and Pablo Ocasio replicated the feat against St. Norbert's. Libero Kaleb Patrick marked 18 digs across the two matches to lead the team in that regard.
Next up for North Park comes a chance to earn their first conference win of the season, with a rematch on the horizon against #4 Carthage this Wednesday, March 1st. The Vikings narrowly missed out on a comeback in a 5-set loss to the Firebirds last Saturday, but they'll have their chance this time as the home team with game time set for 7:00 P.M.