By Jarred Davis
November 29, 2018
 
(SIOUX CITY, Iowa.) Coming off two straight wins at the NAIA Championship, #15 Westmont Volleyball fought hard but ultimately fell to #2 Park (Mo.) 3-0 (15-25, 10-25) Thursday night at the Tyson Events Center.
 
"That team is a very well-oiled machine," said Westmont head coach Patti Cook. "We basically just got outplayed tonight by a team that was playing a lot more refined volleyball than we were. It took us a long time to realize that if we played our style of volleyball, that we would be just fine, but we could never quite get over that mental hump."
 
"I'm hoping that the team will use this to really fire them up," added Cook. "I know that we did not play very good volleyball tonight, they know we didn't play well tonight and that's not how we want to remember our tournament experience."
 
The Warriors hit just .019 for the game while the Pirates posted a .287 attack percentage. Park (Mo.) was also aided by 57 team digs while Westmont recorded 43.
 
Samantha Neely tallied six kills, while Cassidy Rea and Libby Dahlberg added four apiece on the night.
 
Friday, Westmont will match-up with #1 Grand View (Iowa) at 9:00 a.m. CST in the first match of a 16-team single-elimination bracket.
 
"I think we're gonna be a lot more fired up and play with more aggressiveness and play more fearless," said Cook.
 
"We're excited to play a team that we know is very good and plays high level volleyball. We're looking forward to playing our best volleyball against them because we know we'll have to in order to be able to beat a team like that."