Lourdes earned itself a spot in the Wolverine-Hoosier Athletic Conference championship match with a 25-22, 25-17, 25-17 victory over Goshen on Friday evening inside the Russell J. Ebeid Recreation Center in the semifinals of the WHAC tournament.
 
The ninth-ranked, and top-seeded, Gray Wolves hit .248 for the evening while holding the Maple Leafs to a .091 hitting night, and outdug Goshen 56-38 for the match.
 
"I thought we played pretty good volleyball from the start," head coach Greg Reitz said after the match.  "Our defense was sound and aggressive, and we rally battled for balls to extend rallies.  We made some good pursuits and hustle plays we haven't been making."
 
Six straight points off the serve of Guga Heidrich (Braco do Norte, Brazil/Colegio Unificado) allowed the Gray Wolves to open up an 18-11 lead in the opening set and Lourdes withstood a late Goshen run to take the early lead in the match.
 
The Gray Wolves limited the Maple Leafs to an .048 hitting mark in the second set.  Lourdes took an early 10-4 lead and slowly built upon it the rest of the stanza for a 2-0 advantage.
 
A 10-4 run in the third set put the Gray Wolves in front 12-7 and they never looked back on the way to finishing off their eighth sweep of the season.
 
Jeff Lam (Richmond, B.C./Hugh McRoberts H.S.), who was named WHAC Player of the Year earlier in the day, put down 19 kills and hit .405 as Ian Fields (Phoenix, Ariz./Sandra Day O'Connor H.S.) dished out 36 assists.  Ricardo Gehrke (Blumenau, Brazil/Escola Barao Do Rio Branco) added 10 kills while defensively, Heidrich had a match-high 18 digs.
 
"Our passing was pretty good, but we would like to have some more options and distribute the ball across the net," Reitz added.  We had some good individual performances tonight."
 
Alexander Rabadzhiev led fourth-seeded Goshen (15-9) with 10 kills while Brayton Yoder had 11 digs.
 
Lourdes (13-2) will host 11^th-ranked Indiana Tech on Saturday afternoon inside the Ebeid Rec Center for the WHAC tournament title and the league's automatic bid to the NAIA National Championships.  First serve is set for 1 p.m.