BELLINGHAM, Wash. ? Rhea Cardwell slammed 30 kills for the second straight match but it was not quite enough Saturday as 18th-ranked Western Washington prevailed 33-31, 24-26, 25-23, 19-25, 15-13 over Alaska Anchorage in a Great Northwest Athletic Conference volleyball match at Carver Gym.
The Seawolves (15-14, 7-9 GNAC) finished their season by giving the regionally 6th-ranked Vikings (21-3, 13-3) a scare as they tried to clinch a playoff berth.
WWU, which took six match points to win the first set, was led by 19 kills and seven block assists from Tiana Roma, plus 17 kills and 10 digs from Megan Amundson.
UAA dominated the second and fourth sets, and the fifth was a tight affair with neither team leading by more than two points throughout.
Down 14-12, Seawolf Rachel Kidwell (13 kills, 13 digs, career-high 5 block assists) kept UAA in it with her final kill, but Roma would end the match on the next play with a kill of her own.
Sophomore middle blocker Cortney Lundberg tied her career-high with 15 kills for UAA, plus six block assists, while senior Joanna Johnson had 10 kills, 11 digs and a career-high seven assists in her final collegiate appearance.
Meanwhile, Cardwell ? who tied the UAA school record with 32 kills in Thursday's win at Central Washington ? reached the 30-kill plateau again and added an impressive 22 digs. Her performance made her just the second player in the GNAC history to reach 30 kills twice and the first to do it in back-to-back matches.
The senior from Prineville, Ore., finished her two-year Seawolf career with school records for kills per set in a season (4.48) and career (4.02). In terms of total kills in a season, she wound up with 506, in the No. 3 spot behind only Seawolf Hall-of-Famer Jen Szczerbinski (535 in 1992 and 513 in 1990).
Despite Saturday's loss, the Seawolves finished over .500 for the first time since the 2003 season (16-10) and tripled their win total from last season's 5-19 campaign. First-year head coach Chris Green also helped UAA finish three spots higher than its last-place prediction in the GNAC preseason coaches' poll, coming in sixth in the nine-team league.
