The Dominican University women's volleyball team saw its seven-match winning streak come to a halt on Tuesday night, falling to the Benedictine University Eagles in four sets (25-23, 25-23, 17-25, 26-24).  The loss drops the Stars to 10-3 on the season and 1-1 in the Northern Athletics Collegiate Conference (NACC).
 
"It is hard to know that you dropped a match by a combined six points," commented Cameron Andrew, the Stars' second-year head coach following the loss. "We out-statted them in just about every category and scored 15 more points…that's a really hard pill to swallow, especially in a conference match."
 
"We have to use this as something that moves us forward.  We cannot let it be something that weighs us down," continued Andrew. "We have two very challenging matches this weekend and have to get ourselves right to be ready for Saturday."
 
The Stars were extremely aggressive at the serving line, collecting ten aces but also committed 15 errors.  Natalie Jones led the Stars serving game with five aces.
 
Offensively, Dominican hit .291 in the loss while Benedictine managed a .285 attack percentage. The Stars racked up ten more kills (63-53) but committed five more errors (19-14). Summer Smith and Gabija Sinickaite led a trio of Stars with double-digit kills with 13 apiece.  Gillian Jones added ten kills while Haley Notzen finished with nine.  Anastasia Labadessa and Natalie Jones shared setting duties, doling out 24 and 20 assists respectively. 
 
For the Eagles, Taylor Dunwell and Molly Stock provided the one-two punch offensively.  The pair combined for 36 kills on 85 swings.  Dunwell finished the night with a match-high 20 kills while Stock knocked down 16.
 
Defensively, the Eagles won the battle at the net, collecting eight blocks to the Stars' two. In the back row, Dominican's Sarah Lychock collected a math-high 18 digs.
 
Dominican will take a break from conference play this weekend to engage a pair of regional foes, Elmhurst College and UW-Whitewater, in a tri-match at Elmhurst. The Stars will square off against the host Bluejays at 10:00 a.m. on Saturday before meeting the UW-Whitewater Warhawks at noon.