The Blugold women’s volleyball team split the Augsburg Invite 2-2 this past weekend at Augsburg College (Minn.).

Head Coach Kim Wudi said even with two losses the women played well and displayed a lot of effort.

“I think our record is a little bit deceiving.  We went 2-2 but we played a lot better this weekend than we had the first weekend,” Wudi said. “It would have been nice to win more matches but I think we are playing really well right now.”

Against Northwestern College (Minn.), who Wudi described as their toughest match of the weekend, the Blugolds started the first set with a lead but were unable to hold it.

Wudi said they expected Northwestern to be a great team and a challenge on the court.

“It really is just a matter of reducing the number of errors that we make,” she said. “We made too many mistakes on our side of the net and didn’t force the other teams to make mistakes.”

Senior Amy Bomgren agreed the team performed well this weekend, regardless of their record.

“We really just wanted to play our best and in the two matches that we won we really did capitalize on using our strengths of our teams,” Bomgren said. “We lost a couple hard ones this weekend which was tough.”

Bomgren said a main weakness the Blugolds demonstrated was the unforced errors which caused them to beat themselves on the court.

Wudi said this week in practice they are going to work on reducing errors and playing smarter.

Eau Claire has eight freshmen on the team this year and Wudi said they are still figuring out what works best for the team.

“We lost a big part of our offense last year with the seniors that we lost,” Wudi said. “We miss their leadership.  It’s taking a little bit for us to get our new people involved, but our upperclassmen right now are really picking it up as far as leading the team. I’m pleased with 5-4.  In this point in the season it’s about finding what works for us as far as a lineup and figuring out what our team identity is going to be.”

This weekend the Blugolds travel to Cornell (Iowa) for the Cornell College Classic.  Wudi said they are facing some challenging teams but hopefully they will continue to improve to be prepared for their first conference game on Sept. 19.

Bomgren said Wudi does a great job of knowing Eau Claire’s opponents so the team can really prepare for each match.

“Coach Kim does research on each team we are going to play every weekend so we know what our opponents are going to do, so we really try to prepare for different kinds of attacks they are going to utilize,” Bomgren said.

Even with a challenging weekend ahead the Blugolds remain positive.

“I’m excited about this team,” Wudi said. “I think we have a lot of potential this year to play well in future tournaments and our conference schedule.”