The Northern State volleyball team provided a little late-match heroics to put an exclamation point on a solid weekend over action at Wachs Arena on Saturday afternoon.
Less than 24 hours after sweeping Crookston, the Wolves finished off Minnesota State Moorhead 25-21, 25-17, and 27-25, saving set set points in the process of the Northern Sun Intercollegiate Conference victory.
“This team has so much fight in them. We wanted to close it out so badly,” said NSU’s Linnea Nesheim. “We got our first two sets. We didn’t want to have to give up the third. We wanted to finish it.”
The Wolves trailed 24-18 in the third set and it appeared that a fourth set would be inevitable.
However, the NSU players had other ideas.
“We were down a hot minute,” said Northern coach Brent Aldridge, “and I said if we can just chip away and get within one, two, it puts pressure on the passer on the other side.”
That’s exactly what the Wolves did, slowly chipping away point by point until all the pressure was on the Dragons.
“That’s how our timeouts are. That’s how we talk,” Aldridge said. “You guys every point we put on the board, it gets harder to pass.”
It was Nesheim who did major damage from the pin, pounding down five kills to finish off the match and finish off Moorhead.
Nesheim understood that there was no margin for error during that pivotal surge, but she has been in that position before.
“It’s not easy at all,” Nesheim said. “There’s been many times where I have lost that last point and we’ve had to go to a next set, but the only way to close it out is to be aggressive so we had to do it.”
Nesheim led the squad with 18 kills on the afternoon.
“Linnea was really good on the outside of putting the ball away for us,” said fellow NSU hitter Katelyn Schroeder. “She’s fun to play with.”
Schroeder did major damage in her own right with 10 kills, often off of sets from Ava Nilsson. The duo used to compete against each other in high school while Schroeder was at Hitchcock-Tulare and Nilsson was at Warner.
“Me and Ava, we played a year of Matchbox Club together, so we had already kind of played together,” Schroeder said of the chemistry between them. “Ava is just a great person overall, so there’s never been too much competitiveness just between us.”
The Wolves pulled away from a 20-20 tie in the opening set by scoring five of the last six points. Schroeder had a pair of kills in that key stretch.
Northern then scored the last seven points of the second set with Schroeder producing kills on four of those points.
The Wolves then hit a bit of lull in the third before storming back to complete the sweep.
“I think especially when it gets to the third set, the team that’s up two sets has everything to lose and the other team has nothing to lose,” Nesheim said. “I think they just naturally pick it up and then we’re kind of naturally a little bit more tentative, but at the end, just closing it out just was so good for us.”
The Wolves, who play at Minnesota Duluth on Friday, improved to 7-3 on the season, and defending their home court with a pair of victories to start the NSIC campaign.
“You cannot lose these home matches,” Nesheim said. “Our conference is so competitive, so I think our community makes it so much easier for us to play well.”
To see a complete box score, click on the following link:
https://nsuwolves.com/sports/womens-volleyball/stats/2026/msu-moorhead/boxscore/14667
