Box Score NAMPA, Idaho – The Northwest Nazarene volleyball team played like a team featuring nine freshmen and some inexperienced upperclassmen Friday in the season-opening match.

The jitters led to errors hitting, serving and passing and added up to a 25-17, 25-13, 19-25, 25-19 loss to Cal State Monterey Bay in the Fairfield Inn & Suites Invitational at the Johnson Sports Center.

"I feel like we were a little tense and stressed out the first two games," senior Cami Heninger said. "We just need to be more relaxed."

NNU, which graduated five seniors who all started at times throughout the year, was shaky early on, making a combined 11 attacking errors in the first two sets.

The Nighthawks (0-1) settled down in the third set to grab the win and had chances in the fourth set, but again made too many errors.

"Our serve receive was a lot better, which helped our offense to get more involved," NNU coach Doug English said. "Just coming in and starting to figure out (the opponent), who their best attackers are and who their better blockers are – I think we did better at that, but we just weren't close enough.

"We just made a lot of errors that last set, whether it was serving or hitting or whatever."

The Nighthawks host Dixie State at 7:30 p.m. Friday before closing the tournament against Biola at 1 p.m. Saturday. In the tournament's opening match, Biola won a five-set thriller against Dixie State 16-25, 25-22, 25-27, 25-19, 18-16.

While the Nighthawks struggled at times, they did have some positives come out of the match.

Heninger finished with 12 kills, 13 digs and a .296 hitting percentage. Abbey Blum added 15 kills after struggling early. Jess Brennis had nine kills, Shayli Siegfreid had 16 digs, and Megan Nelson and Mckenzie Lee each had 20 assists.

"I thought Cami had a great match and Abbey, at the end, swung hard and well the last two sets – we kind of need that from those two," English said. "Tayler (Markland) and Lexi (Ward) did a nice job blocking and Brooke did a nice job blocking on the outside for us.

"Monterey Bay played well. They served well and they passed well and you have to give them credit too."

The Otters (1-0) had 17 kills and no errors in the second set, committing just 13 errors the entire match and having a team hitting percentage of .301.