NATCHITOCHES – Northwestern State finished its four-match home stand with a perfect 4-0 record on Saturday with a 3-0 (25-20, 25-19, 25-10) sweep of ULM, finishing the Battle for the Boot home tournament weekend with three wins. 
 
The Demons (5-7, 1-0) picked up their fifth win in a row with much the same formula employed in the previous three wins on the week, aggression at the service line. NSU finished with seven aces for the second match in a row, but more importantly kept the Warhawks from maintaining any offensive rhythm on balls that didn't immediately tally a point for the Demons.
 
"ULM has a lot of options offensively and we needed to serve aggressively to take one or hopefully two of those options out of the mix for us to have to defend," head coach Sean Kiracofe said. "Fortunately, we were able to do that consistently throughout the match."
 
The teams were dead even across nearly all stat categories in the first set, the difference that gave the Demons the edge that has been the case for the entire week was the success from the serving line. 
 
NSU had five aces in the opening frame, with one each from Piper Boydstun, Symone Wesley, Teresa Garza and a pair from Jordan Gamble. ULM had just one. 
 
With ULM ahead 19-18 late in the set, a Warhawk service error, following immediately by Gamble's second ace, sent the Demons on set-clinching 7-1 run. Kills from Gerwig and Reaghan Thompson gave the Demons a two-point lead and a pair of ULM hitting errors capped the run, thanks to difficult to handle initial balls from Amina Attra serves.
 
The Demons benefited regularly from and forced ULM into errors of various types during the match, including 15 unforced attack errors and seven service errors. NSU added seven blocks in the match including back-to-back stuffs where Thompson connected with Breanna Burrell on one side for the first and flipped to the other to hook up with Wesley for the second that gave the Demons a 10-5 lead early in the second set.
 
Against her former team, Gerwig gave the Demons the 2-0 match lead on her sixth kills of the match, finishing the second set and setting herself and her teammates up for a dominant finish.
 
As if they smelled blood in the water, the Demon offense tore the third set crushing 17 kills on 29 swings and just one error for a .552 hitting percentage. Gerwig was the most locked in of the seven players that collected kills in the set.
 
The Denton, Texas, native went 6-for-8 on swing attempts in the final frame including scoring on three straight swings as part of an early 9-1 run to put the Demons ahead 12-3. A Garza shot made it four straight kills and NSU did not look back from that point forward.
 
"We had another good overall match just like when we played Louisiana Tech," Kiracofe said. "We communicated and worked well with each other for a great team win."
 
Another four-kill spree from La'Treva Kennedy and Burrell closed the set and the match for the Demons' who finished the match with a season-best .286 attack percentage for the match.
 
Gerwig had a match-best 12 kills in her fourth straight double-digit kill match and hit a team-best .294 with a 3.36 per set average for the week. Gamble, Thompson, Wesley, Burrell and Garza each added four or more kills on the day. Ashlyn Svoboda averaged 5.3 digs per set in the match and led all players with 16 digs.