NEWPORT NEWS, Va.— Eastern University Women's Volleyball closed the regular season with a pair of neutral-site wins at Christopher Newport University. The Eagles ground out a tough five set win over Centre College in the opener and claimed a decisive three-set win over Roanoke College in the final game of the regular season. With 32 kills today, Hannah Pringle became the fourth player in Eastern Volleyball history to reach 1500 kills in a career. 

The Eagles (22-7) had their hands full against the tough squad from Centre. Eastern hit .304 with nine kills to win the fifth set, 15-10. Both teams had service runs early, but Eastern erased a 7-5 deficit with a kill from Veronica Faber to make it 6-7, and three service points from Emma Ciesielka. The rookie defensive specialist delivered an ace in the middle of that run to give the Eagles an 8-7 edge when the teams switched sides. Eastern was perfect on their final three sideout chances and Sarah Furey and Grace Cooper each served for points. Pringle delivered the final two points of the match with kills. She had a match-high 22. 

The Eagles did well to bounce back after the Colonels (16-12) scored the final six points of the opening set to win it 26-24. Josie Arezina had five of her nine kills in the opening frame. 

Eastern won the next two sets 25-19 and 25-20. With five blocks and only two hitting errors, the Eagles claimed the third set despite the fact that Centre had 18 kills. Eastern hit .303 in the third. 

The Colonels hit .282 on the way to a 25-19 win in the fourth. This was the seventh five-set match for the young Eastern squad. Pringle had 22 kills and Alexis Standford had 12. Both Kallie Rogers and Furey had 26 assists, and Viviana Fragoso finished with 27 digs and a pair of aces. Faber finished with nine kills and four blocks. After picking up one block in the final match, Faber is at 96 for her first season. 

"This was a good focus win after dropping a tough match last night," Head Coach Mark Birtwistle said after the match.  We were down in several of the sets today and had to fight through some moments to beat a good Centre team. Along with the outsides, Veronica had a nice match. Our defensive core was  locked in and played strong down the stretch."

Eastern and Centre had only met one time before today. The Colonels claimed a five-set win in 2007. 

In the second match, the Eagles served aggressively and received serve well to pull away early. The Eagles were successfulon 10-of-12 sideout chances in the opening set and won 25-12. All six hitters recorded kills in the first set. 

Though Roanoke closed the gap in the second and third set, the Eagles were clean in serve-receive and had only five hitting errors against 25 kills to win 25-20 and 25-17. 

Fragoso had 14 more digs and Ciesielka had 11. Rogers and Furey again delivered identical assist numbers with 15 apiece. With her work this weekend, Fragoso moves into the top 16 on Eastern's career digs list. Amongst players who played their entire career with 25-point rally-scoring rules, she is seventh. NCAA Vlleyball had sideout scoring until 2001 before switching to 30-point rally scoring until the start of the 2008 season. 

The Eagles will host the fourth seeded Hood College Blazers in the MAC Commonwealth Semifinals on Wednesday evening at 7.