The Midwest Christian College Conference volleyball tournament was held on October 21-22 at Manhattan Christian College (Manhattan, Kans.). The Lady Bears went into the tournament seeded fifth, with their first match against fourth seeded Ozark Christian (Ozark, Mo.). They had split with Ozark during the regular season, so it was evenly matched.

In the first set, the Lady Bears got down early and couldn’t turn the tide and ended up losing 17-25. In the second set, they turned it around with a strong 25-18 victory. The third set found the lady bears leading 21-18, but after getting a couple hits blocked and a pivotal receiving error, Ozark tied the score 21-21. Ozark’s leading hitter put a couple of balls away to propell them to a 25-22 win. The fourth set went back and forth all the way to the end. Barclay was leading 23-20, when a couple of timely errors and a few more blocked spikes ended the match with a 24-26 loss. Ozark would go on to win the conference championship, which included a victory against Manhattan Christian, their first and only MCCC loss of the season. The Lady Bears, on the other hand, would go on to take 5th place after beating Calvary University in 4 sets (25-17, 15-25, 25-22, 25-18).

Head coach Larry Lewis stated, “It just goes to show how close we are to competing for a championship. All season long, we have been able to play every team in the conference tough.”

Barclay had two girls earn All-Conference Honorable Mention recognition. Sophomore Courtney Eltringham (Springfield, Mo.) had 58 assists and 3 aces in the two tournament matches over the weekend. Sophomore Kaylie Fruh (Placentia, Calif.) had 19 kills, 4 blocks, 36 digs, and 5 aces in her two tournament matches.