GREAT FALLS, Mont. – Lewis-Clark State College's volleyball team extended its win streak to five and secured sole possession of second in the Frontier Conference with Saturday afternoon's sweep of No. 18 Providence.
 
The Warriors (18-8, 6-2) dominated the early going of the first game before successfully fending off a series of challenges by the Argos to win 25-23 before closing out the match 25-21 and 25-18. LC hit .228 for the match and drilled 41 kills with Brooke Kaawa setting the pace with 11.
 
"We're a little bit on Cloud 9 right now," coach Shaun Pohlman said. "That week off really helped us just refocus, recommit and re-center our attention."
 
That being said, Pohlman said the Warriors are following the plan they established before the season started.
 
"We just have to be us," he said. "It's what we talked about all year. We're just following the plan."
 
A big part of the plan is distributing the responsibilities throughout the lineup – and it showed in the match stats. Carli Berntson added nine kills to Kaawa's team-leading total with Sydney Lawrence adding another eight.  Jossilyn Remick had 21 assists with Jess Ruffing finishing with 17. Kenzie Dean had 17 digs and Gionni Brown had 15.
 
"It was great seeing our team passing credit from one person to the next to the next," Pohlman said. "Our freshmen (Berntson, Dean and Channa Hart) stepped up in a big way. We have three freshmen who contributed at very high level."
 
In the first game, the Warriors had leads of as many as six points before Providence made a series of surges that eventually made it a one-point game, 22-21. A kill by Berntson on an assist from Ruffing put the Warriors back up by two, 23-21, but the Argos responded with a kill to make it 23-22. Morgan Ness' kill on an assist from Remick made it 24-22 with Providence again responding with a kill before Sydney Lawrence closed the game with a kill – with Remick once again on the assist.
 
It wasn't until the latter stages of the second game that the Warriors took firm control. After the Argos tied the score at 19, Berntson gave the Warriors the lead with a kill on an assist from Ruffing. The teams traded kills before Providence took a 21-20 lead. Successive Argos' errors returned the lead, 22-21, to the Warriors before LC closed the match with back-to-back kills from Lawrence and an attack error by Providence.
 
It wasn't until the midpoint of the third game that the Warriors took control. Leading 13-12, they used a kill from Kaawa and three errors by the Argos to move ahead 17-12. They went up 21-14 with kills from Hart, Kaawa and Berntson interspersed with an attack error and a service error to give the Argos their two points in the run.
After three kills from Providence cut the lead to 21-17, LC responded by scoring the four of the match's final give points – three on kills (Berntson, Ness and Lawrence) and one on a set error by the Argos.