ST. PETERSBURG, FLA. – Chadron State College's volleyball team opened up competition in the Eckerd Classic in St. Petersburg, Florida, with two close losses Friday. Nova Southeastern University put back the Eagles in three straight sets and Florida Institute of Technology won in five.
 
The Eagles' ended out their first day of competition in a five set loss to FIT that went down to the wire. CSC came out swinging hard in the first set, the Eagles hit .395 as a team and won 29-27. The two teams traded  sets before FIT took the last set 15-11.
 
Lelalelei Nomura led the Eagles' in the tight match, ending the duel with 23 kills and hitting .360. Hanna Flaming and Erika Roybal chipped in 13 and 11 kills apiece, hitting over .179. The setter for the match was Mariah Conyers who finished with 53 assists.
 
Defensively Alyssa Bauer led Chadron State with 27 digs. CSC as a team though only finished with two team blocks, which wasn't enough to stop Marilyn Dick who ended the night with a match high 27 kills hitting over .500. FIT finished the night with four players with over 10 kills, and four others with over 10 digs.
 
In Chadron State's first match of the day, Nova put down the Eagles 22-25, 12-25 and 22-25. CSC had 127 total attacks, but Nova had three players with over 10 digs and nine team blocks.
 
Nomura led CSC again with her eight kills and .269 hitting percentage. Nomura also contributed two aces and five digs in the match. Roybal added five kills and Flaming put down five.
 
Chadron State put up a fight behind Alia Brennan's three blocks and Bauer's 14 digs, but in the end could not fight off Nova's Caitlin Donahue and Sydney Cook, who finished the match with eight and 12 kills respectively as well as boasting a hitting percentage of .538 and .345.
 
Chadron State College finishes out its tournament play for the season Saturday against host Eckerd College and the University of Mary.