VOLLEYBALL

Wednesday night’s 3-0 loss to Grace College, 25-22, 25-15, 25-20, at the Manahan Orthopaedic Capital Center wrapped up the regular season for the Huntington volleyball team. HU’s record stands at 14-19 overall, 6-12 in league play.

The Foresters enter postseason tied with Bethel for the No. 7 seed among their league peers. Since Huntington swept the Pilots in regular season, Herber’s crew gets the nod for the 7th spot while Bethel will slide in at No. 8.

For the Lancers (16-17), tonight’s win snapped a four-game losing skid as they head into the league tournament with a 10-8 CL record which lands them in a three-way tie for fourth with Taylor and Mount Vernon.

Huntington put themselves behind the eight ball to start the first two sets. In set one, the Foresters trimmed an early eight-point deficit to a single point at 18-17 in the opening set to put themselves back in the mix before coming up a few points short of a heroic finish.

Set two saw the visitors spot Grace six points right off the bat. It didn’t bode well for the visitors as they ended up chasing the Lancers the rest of the set to no avail. The third set had a different feel as HU did not let history repeat itself. The Foresters enjoyed a handful of leads early on in addition to forcing 14 ties with the last stalemate coming at 8-8 before the Lancers rattled off nine of the next ten points to open up an unsurmountable lead.

“We played well the last third of each set,” noted Coach Herber. “That does not get the job done in a volleyball match or in life.

“The never-quit mentality needs to be something we embrace every single point. This conference is far too good for us to think that a partial sense of urgency could take us to the top.”

Grace finished with 38 kills to Huntington’s 33 but it was a .220 hitting percentage that gave the Lancers a defining edge over their visitors who finished with a .050 hitting percentage.

Paige Eakright paced Herber’s squad with 12 kills. Tya Bynum posted six while Jennings Tacosik and Anna Lewis each added five kills. Tacosik directed the offense by dishing out 24 assists. She also tracked down 12 digs for the double double. Eakright also tallied a double double with 14 digs to go along with her 12 kills.

Ariene Butler enjoyed a team-high 17 digs as the third Foresters to finish with double digit digs.

“As we head into the gym for practice tomorrow and Friday, we are shifting our focus to beating Marian on Saturday in the first round of the conference tournament,” said Herber. “We can still put an exclamation point on the end of this season.”

The Foresters will travel to Indianapolis to face the 2nd-seeded Knights on Saturday in the quarterfinals of the Crossroads League Tournament.