NAMPA, Idaho – Tayler Markland was a bit intimidated coming into Thursday's Great Northwest Athletic Conference match.

The Northwest Nazarene freshman middle blocker was about to go up against the No. 13 team in the country in Western Washington.

A team that features the defending GNAC player of the year in Abby Phelps and an All-American middle in Kayleigh Harper.

Despite the fear factor, the Nighthawks (1-9 overall, 1-2 GNAC) played one of their better matches of the season despite being swept 25-21, 25-14, 25-18.

"It is definitely intimidating, but I accepted the challenge and I had a lot of fun playing," Markland said. "It is fun playing teams of this caliber because it makes you strive to get better."

NNU came out hot leading 7-3, 9-5 and 11-7 before the Vikings (8-3, 3-0) took control of the match and a 15-13 lead en route to the tight first set victory.

"I thought we came out great," NNU coach Doug English said. "The crowd was great and we made them work for the first set and for the third set."

While the Nighthawks are likely sick of moral victories at this point of the season, they are still working hard to learn something from each loss.

"We have moments where we are really, really good and we are just trying to figure out how to sustain that over a long period of time," English said. "We had moments where we definitely felt good about ourselves and then we had moments where we need to keep getting better in serve receive."

Markland finished with five kills and no attack errors. Natalie Knauf added three kills with just one error while playing the third set.

Abbey Blum and Kayla Sale added nine kills each and Cami Heninger had eight. Megan Nelson had 32 assists and 11 digs, Shayli Siegfreid had 14 digs and Sale had 10.

The Nighthawks are back in action at 7 p.m. Saturday against Simon Fraser.