BURNABY– The mid-season momentum continued for Simon Fraser University Saturday afternoon as the women's volleyball team won its fourth straight match, 3-1, over Seattle Pacific before 352 fans in the West Gym.

SFU needed a  gutsy come-from-behind performance in the fourth set to secure the win. The set scores were 25-23, 25-16, 21-25, 25-17.
 
After SPU pulled out the win in the third set to stay alive, the Falcons jumped out to an 8-3 fourth set lead. But SFU regrouped during a timeout and took 14 of the next 18 points to secure the homecourt win in front of many youth volleyball players from Lower Mainland high schools cheering them on. SFU came out of the timeout with two straight points and then peeled off two four-point runs on the way to a 17-12 advantage and the win.
 
"I didn't think we were playing poorly in the third set we just had to clean up our side, our serving and some errors, and take control of the things we controlled," said head coach Gina Schmidt.
 
SFU improved to 12-4 overall and moved into a third-place tie in the Great Northwest Athletic Conference with a 6-3 conference mark, behind only Alaska Anchorage (15-5, 8-0) and Western Washington (10-4, 6-1), as the first half of the conference schedule came to an end.
 
"As the season goes along you learn and our earlier losses to Western Washington (5 sets) and Alaska Anchorage (4 sets) were good lessons for us and we've taken those lessons and made ourselves better and used those losses to fuel our desire to keep winning," said head coach Gina Schmidt.
 
SFU has found its mid-season form with four straight wins and six in eight games. In their last five four games SFU has won 12 of 13 sets.
 
The Falcons (9-7, 5-4 GNAC) entered the game with an identical conference record to SFU. Saturday, Simon Fraser had 18 more kills for the match, 58-40, than SPU and out hit the visitors .297 (58 kills-20 errors-128 attacks) to .129 (40-24-124).
 
SFU hit .379 in Set 1 and.593 (17-1-27) in Set 2 to win its 11th consecutive sets.
 
SFU got double-digit kills from Brooke Dexter (17, .385 hitting percent), Camryn Vosloh (14, .300) and Kalyn Hartmann (12, .588). Hartmann added a game-high six blocks. Hartmann was helped by Abby Willett (5) and Hanna Kolof (3) in the block department.
 
Julia Tays had 46 assists, the fifth time this season she has had more than 40 assists in a game. "We passed really well which enabled us to run our offence and create kills where we could get them," said Schmidt. "SPU is a very good blocking team and we were able to set up our attack to our advantage for our hitters."
 
In the opening set, SFU built a 20-10 lead, making 10 straight kills without an error, before SPU narrowed the margin to 22-18. SFU had triple set point at 24-21 before finishing off the Falcons.
 
SFU turned an 8-8 tie into a 19-12 lead in Set 2 and never looked back.
 
Trailing 18-16 in Set 3, SPU went on a run to take a 23-21 lead and then closed out SFU to stay alive. That set up the decisive fourth set that SFU won.
 
Next Up:
SFU is at home next week with games Thursday (Central Washington, 10-5 overall, 6-3 GNAC) and Saturday (Northwest Nazarene 4-12 overall, 2-7 GNAC)