Castleton, VT:  The Cobleskill women's volleyball team fell short in a non-conference battle with Castleton University 3-2 (25-23, 25-21, 22-25, 27-29, 15-13) on Thursday night at the Glenbrook Gym.

It was a back and forth affair all night as both teams look determined to come out with the win.  

The tone for this match was set during a close first set between the Tigers and Spartans. The Tigers led 8-4 after kills from MacKenzie Larson (Winterset, IA) and Alexis Miranda (Nashua, NH).  Then Castleton battled back and used two service aces to tie the game at 8-8.  Nine more ties would happen before Castleton took the first set, 25-23, after an attack error by the Tigers.

In the second set, Castleton jumped out to a 19-15 lead before Cobleskill battled back to make it 20-20 after an ace by Larson.  The Tigers couldn't close out the set, and the Spartans went on a 5-1 run to take the second set 25-21 and push their lead 2-0.

Castleton started red hot and built a 16-8 lead in the third set before Cobleskill went on their own 6-0 run to close the lead to 16-14.  The Tigers kept the pressure on and tied up the game 18-18.  The Spartans would go on a small run to lead 22-18, but once again Cobleskill battled back with their own run to take the set 25-22.

The Tigers clawed their way back in the fourth set each time as Castleton attempted to build a lead. The Spartans led the whole set until the Tigers went on a 5-0 run to take the lead 19-18 after a kill my Emily Wisniewski (Southbury, CT) assisted by Kasey Orlowski (Hewitt, NJ). Each team was unable to create any type of lead and the set went into extra points tied at 25-25.  The Tigers were finally able to break the deadlock via a clutch kill by Larson which gave the visitors the 29-27 win.

After an exciting four sets, it's all came down to the fifth and final set between these two evenly matched teams. In similar fashion, the last set went down to the wire.  Castleton would edge out Cobleskill for a 15-13 win and a 3-2 match win.

Abigail Scheurich (Oxford, CT) lead the Tigers with 13 kills and added four block assists.  Kasey Orlowski had a team high 24 assists and chipped in 12 digs. Libero Victoria O'Bar (Middlebury, Conn.) had a good defensive game with a game high 29 digs for Cobleskill. Wisniewski was a force at the net with 5 total blocks. 

Castleton (3-6) was led by Hailey Martinovich's game high 16 kills.  Maddie Delsignore led all players with 41 assists in the game.

The Tigers (1-9) finished the game with 48 kills compared Castleton's 53.  The Tigers ended with 47 assists, 11 aces, 99 digs and 12 total blocks.  Cobleskill managed to have a higher hitting percentage (.086) than the Spartans (.070).

Cobleskill will look to rebound on Wednesday, September 28^th, as they travel to SUNY Delhi for a 7 p.m. conference match.