BILLINGS, Mont. – Niurka Toribio had a season-high 25 kills to help the Lewis-Clark State College volleyball team overcome Rocky Mountain College in five sets on Friday. The No. 24-ranked Warriors won their fifth straight Frontier Conference match by a score of 21-25, 25-20, 25-21, 19-25, 15-8.
Five of Toribio’s kills came in the fifth set when the Warriors hit .444 to bring a quick end to a very competitive contest. LCSC outscored Rocky 7-2 over the final volleys and the junior from the Dominican Republic ended the match with an exclamation point with a clean hard-hit kill to the center of the court.
Though they ended strong, the Warriors, now 5-0 in conference play and 8-5 overall, started out a little slow. The team hit just .067 in the first set and saw Rocky catapult to a one set edge.
LCSC then trailed early in the second and third sets, but was able to settle in and ended up hitting .268 and .263 in those sets, respectively.
Toribio (pictured above) did much of the offensive damage as she finished with a .302 hitting clip in 53 attack attempts. Chelsea Strong also turned in a good night with nine kills and a hitting percentage of .400 even. Keisha Luebbert-Kennedy added 11 kills, and Brianna Kelly had nine.
Besides Toribio and Strong, no other Warrior was able to hit above .300, and this was due mostly to Rocky Mountain’s exceptional blocking ability.
The Bears, who currently lead the conference with 2.9 blocks per set, collected 15 blocks on the night, many of which came in the first and fourth sets.
Anna Dewald, a 6-foot-3 sophomore, led Rocky with eight blocks, while teammates Ahlea Billis and Esther Timofeyev added five each. Setter Nevena Dragovic, who had a season-high 56 assists, led LCSC with four blocks, and the Warriors had 6.5 overall.
Rocky, now 2-3 and 6-12, didn’t hit as well as it blocked though and finished with a .145 percentage. Dewald hit .370 and led the team with 12 kills, while Timofeyev hit .360 and had 10 kills.
The Warriors hit only .183, but enjoyed a 6-3 edge in service aces, and a 101-76 advantage in digs. Toribio and Kaylee Rector led with three aces apiece. Rector also had a team-high 23 digs, and was followed closely by teammate Chelsea Shears who had 22.
Lewis-Clark State will continue its schedule with two more conference matches in Montana next week. It will face Great Falls on Thursday and then head to Havre, Mont. to play MSU-Northern on Friday.
