The Lake Forest College women's volleyball team was defeated 25-21, 25-19, 22-25, 25-15 in Saturday's regular season finale at Grinnell College.
The Foresters finished sixth in the Midwest Conference standings and will play again at Grinnell, the #3 seed, in the quarterfinals of the MWC Tournament on Tuesday, November 10.
L'rae White,
Simisola Osinaike, and
Rio Dirksen led Lake Forest on Saturday with nine, eight, and seven kills respectively. Osinaike finished with a .33 hitting percentage and Dirksen was at .316 while the team posted a mark of .152 overall.
Setter
Lilly Robinson led the Foresters with 23 assists and six aces while her 15 digs were tied for team-high honors with
Alisa Kevric.
Lake Forest had a season-high 11 blocks on the afternoon and Dirksen was a part of nine of them, tying the sixth-highest total in team history for a four-set match.
The teams were separated by no more than three points in the opening set until, with the score tied at 21, the Pioneers rattled off four in a row to close it out.
Grinnell won 10 of the first 14 points in set two and Lake Forest got no closer than two the rest of the way.
The Foresters won five consecutive points twice in set three and opened up a nine-points lead at 18-9. Grinnell, however, took the next five points and eventually tied the score at 21. Lake Forest extended the match by winning four of the next five points, the last on a kill by Osinaike.
The Pioneers gradually pulled away in the fourth set, thwarting the Foresters comeback bid.
Lake Forest finished the regular season with an overall record of 11-13 and MWC mark of 4-5. Grinnell is also slightly under .500 at 10-12 overall but went 6-3 in the league.
The same two teams will face off at Grinnell in the quarterfinals of the MWC Tournament on November 10 at 7:00 p.m.
