ST. GEORGE, Utah – The Northwest Nazarene volleyball team lost both its matches Friday at Dixie State in a season-opening tournament.

The Nighthawks (0-2) lost 21-25, 25-17, 26-24, 21-25, 15-9 in the opener to Colorado Christian and then was swept 25-15, 25-21, 25-15 by St. Cloud State.

"Our serve receive can get better as we aim to lose less points there," NNU coach Doug English said. "We need to kill more balls and score more points on offense. We played relatively error free volleyball which was good, but now we need to start scoring points and killing balls."

The Nighthawks wrap the weekend up with a match at 1 p.m. Saturday against Dixie State.

In the opener Friday, Brooke Foster had 18 kills, Abbey Blum and Natalie Sullivan added 11, and Megan Nelson had 39 assists and 23 digs.

NNU had set point at the end of the third set leading 24-23, but let it get away.

"Brooke had a nice offensive match for us. She took a ton of swings and scored really well," English said. "CCU made a nice comeback on some of our errors and made some nice plays.

"Not holding onto the lead in the third set might have cost us the match."

In the fifth set, NNU pulled within 9-8 but CCU closed on a 6-1 run to put it away.

"Megan had a great defensive match too," English said. "Defense is something she worked hard on in the offseason and it was great to see her have such a good match."

In the second match, NNU struggled from the beginning. Foster and Sullivan led the offense with 11 kills, while Blum added 10. Nelson had 28 assists, Kayla Sale had 17 digs and Caroline McMahon had 13.

"Our energy wasn't great to start the match and you can tell from the score," English said. "We played an aggressive second set and we need to play like that set the whole time. Natalie and Abbey both had a good attacking matches for us as well."