LATROBE, Pa. - Lady Baron volleyball lost their final two games of the Bearcat Challenge at St. Vincent College. FUS focused on developing their incoming freshman and running simple offensive strategies in order to gauge their talent level for their season. The Lady Barons lost to Carlow University in three games (13-25, 17-25, 21-25) and Allegheny College in four games(25-18, 20-25, 23-25, 21-25)

FUS battled fatigue in their second match against the Gators after playing nearly all of their roster against Carlow and Pitt-Greesburg the day before.

"I noticed that we were getting tired later in the tournament," Head Coach Kelly Herrmann said. "I told the girls that if we were going to play in the conference championship eventually that we were going to be tired. We played two tough opponents and stayed with them."

With such a young roster, Franciscan used this tournament as an opportunity to run basic offensive sets and learn how to execute against two veteran opponents. Herrmann said she also had the team slow down the pace of their offense to help the learning process. The slower pace helped the roster stay away from errors that could have been a problem at a faster speed.

"We stayed away from tandem plays and a few more challenging sets," Herrmann said. "We did not incorporate many deception plays and without doing any of that we were still able to hit the ball hard and stay competitive in our matches. Going into this weekend we had a lot of questions. We needed to see our girls play and we are very excited about how we handled ourselves this weekend."

The slower pace helped the FUS roster play athletes in different positions. Most significantly, sophomore Dani Link moved to right side hitter, her first game action at that position. Link combined for 19 kills and 26 digs in the day's two games.

"Dani played quite well today," Herrmann said. "We played her on the right outside. She really liked it there and was really taking off."

Franciscan is in the midst of a front loaded schedule with nine games in eight days. Herrmann plans to use this opportunity to challenge her young team.

"By the end of next weekend we want more consistency in our hitting, better timing and to make our offense click," Herrmann said. "After that, we will reevaluate and see what we need to improve before we jump into conference play."

Franciscan will look to bounce back during their first home game of the season against Wooster College on September 4.