Oct. 21, 2005

In its final road match of the regular season, the Northeastern Junior College volleyball team stayed steady Tuesday night with a three-game sweep at McCook, 30-25, 30-21, 30-15. The win improves Northeastern's record to 29-10, with a 19-1 mark since beginning the season 9-9. They have won four in a row.

The Plainswomen also found out Tuesday that they remain nationally ranked, moving up to No. 17 in the NJCAA poll.

That ranking showed Tuesday, though maybe not as much as coach Marci Henry would have liked.

"We started off a little bit slow," Henry said. "It was like we were in slow motion. We didn't move very well to balls and some things that we didn't dig I thought we should have."

Sophomore middle hitter Shelby Heggie had 15 kills for Northeastern and a hitting percentage of .407. Janie Elkins hit .476 and had 11 kills and Ashley Murphey added 11 kills.

Libero Lindsey Wilson had 13 digs while Setter Stacy Manweiler had 40 assists while

"She communicates well with her hitters," Henry said of Manweiler. "She maintains consistency on the court and doesn't seem to get real rattled."

The Plainswomen return home Thursday with a match against Otero, their first of five straight home games closing out the regular season.

The Plainswomen will be looking to make improvements leading up to the Region IX Tournament, which will take place at Otero in November.

That means that games against South Sub-region opponents like Otero and Western Nebraska, matches which will be important for tournament seeding.

"We will be concentrating on being more consistent throughout the entire match," Henry said. "If you drop to the third seed then you are playing an extra game. You are looking at some tough matches anyway, so you would rather not play the extra game."

Game time against Otero is 7 p.m.