Reset button works as No. 25 QU volleyball team roars back with five-set victory over No. 13 Lewis

QUINCY — Be it point to point, set to set or match to match, the Quincy University women’s volleyball team is sticking to a forward-thinking mantra.

“It’s reset and get the job done,” senior outside hitter Mattison Norris said.

Saturday required the biggest reset to date.

The Hawks’ season-opening 14-match win streak ended with Friday night’s loss to Indianapolis and a Saturday showdown with 13th-ranked Lewis looming. Yet, their ability to rapidly reset, refocus and reenergize led to a monumental victory.

No. 25 Quincy overcame being forced to go to a fifth set by scoring six of the first eight points and finishing off a 25-20, 25-14, 22-25, 22-25, 15-12 victory in Great Lakes Valley Conference play in front of a loud, raucous crowd in Pepsi Arena.

“This match meant so much more to us than a win against Lewis,” Norris said. “It was bouncing back. It wasn’t just, ‘Oh, this is Lewis. This is such a big match. We’re beating a ranked team.’ This was, ‘OK, we can reset. We can come back the next day.’”

Still, the historical significance of beating Lewis can’t be undersold.

This is the Hawks’ first victory over the Flyers since a four-set victory on Nov. 8, 2001, ending a string of 24 consecutive losses in the series. Quincy had won only seven sets against Lewis in that stretch and had lost 21 consecutive sets.

Overall, Lewis had won 31 of 35 overall matches against Quincy prior to Saturday.

“It tells us the names don’t matter anymore,” Quincy senior outside hitter Emily Rehagen said. “We are Quincy, and we’re on the map and people better know. We’re coming for everybody.”

That’s as long as they come with energy and desire.

Those were lacking in Friday’s three-set loss to Indianapolis.

“I don’t think we were there mentally as a team,” senior setter Makayla Knoblauch said. “We came in today and we knew every single one of us were going to have to put in the work. So it was way better energy today and we played so much better.”

The reset button worked.

Quincy (15-1, 5-1 GLVC) built a 15-9 edge in the first set and finished strong as Rehagen had three kills among the final seven points. The attack improved in the second set as the Hawks hit at a .333 clip while limiting the Flyers to a negative hitting percentage in the 25-14 shellacking.

“We were hungrier,” said Norris, who had kills on eight of her first 16 swings. “We didn’t show up yesterday. It was plain and simple. We did not deserve to win yesterday. We had a target on our back and we didn’t step up to the plate. We did learn from it, and we came back today.

“We knew we had to come out and we knew we had to stay hungry. We knew we had to get their momentum down. We knew we had to pressure them. We had to continue to push ourselves or it wasn’t going to be that outcome.”

Lewis, as expected, didn’t fold. The Flyers (11-6, 3-2 GLVC) won the third and fourth sets by getting defensive. The Hawks were limited to a .096 attack percentage in the fourth set.

“We know we get in a rut sometimes, but it’s how you bounce back,” Rehagen said.

The Hawks have the ability to do that.

Rehagen opened the fifth set with back-to-back kills and added two more in the 6-2 start. Lewis pulled within 9-7 before a kill by Norris and two more by Rehagen made it 12-9. The Hawks’ Emma Wijnbergen finished off the Flyers with kills on the final two points.

“We lost a lot of confidence (Friday night),” Rehagen said. “Maybe not in ourselves, but we wanted to be that 16-0 team at the end of the weekend. So it was more motivation for us to come out on fire today.”

Rehagen finished with 18 kills, 17 digs and two aces, while Norris had 16 kills and 24 digs. Knoblauch dished out 57 assists and had 13 digs, while Wijnbergen led QU with 19 kills and America Galvan had 28 digs.

Defensively, the Hawks finished with 103 digs.

“We’re going to enjoy the moment, but we know we have so much more work to do,” Knoblauch said. “We’ll be ready to get back to work again next week.”