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GOLDEN, Colo. -  A long and hard fought battle opened the 2010 season for the Minnesota State University Moorhead Dragon volleyball team (1-0) as they took a five set match from regional opponent the Regis Rangers (Colo.) (0-1) at the Oredigger Classic on Friday. The Dragons dropped their second match of the day, 3-0, to the Mesa State Mavericks.

MATCH ONE
The Dragons took the odd number sets, including a 17-15 victory in the final set to claim the win. The scores of the sets were as follows, with the Dragons score coming first: 25-20, 15-25, 25-19, 22-25 and 17-15.

MSU Moorhead put up more kills in each of the five sets than the Rangers but committed errors that led to their defeat in the second and fourth sets. The Dragons had a total of 67 kills to the Prides' 43.

Sophomore Heidi Lensing led the team with 17 kills, hitting .244. She also had one service ace and 10 digs. Sophomore Meredith Egeland returned to the court after medical redshirting last season, to lead the team in hitting percentage completing 15 of her 27 attacks for a daily percentage of .444. She also had four block assist to lead the team.

Senior Laura Tvrdik had 13 kills in the match while Leigh Splittstoesser led the team with 45 assists. Katy Ness, the team's starting libero, had 22 digs.

In the fifth set the Dragons went up 14-11 on a kill by freshman Kayla Handevidt, after leading by no more than two since the first point was tallied. The Rangers would come back to tie the game as they capitalized on a Dragon error and had back-to-back kills.

The game would again be tied at 15 after the team's exchanged kills but Egeland put down two straight kills fed by Splittstoesser to give the Dragons the win.

MATCH TWO
The second match of the day was not as favorable as the first as the Dragons could not top the RMAC preseason ranked top team in Mesa State, losing 3-0 (25-19, 25-19, 25-20).

Lensing again topped the Dragons leader board with 15 kills in the match, the only member of the team to break into double digits in kills. She also had six digs and one service ace. Splittstoesser had 32 assists in the contest.

MSU Moorhead will step on the court again on Saturday to face both Fort Lewis (Colo.) at 11 a.m. and Colorado School of Mines at 3 p.m. (CST) at the Oredigger Classic.