With a 6 a.m. flight to catch Wednesday in Fairbanks, the UAA volleyball team was prepared for an early morning wake-up call.
Not as expected was the wake-up call delivered Tuesday night by the Nanooks of UAF.
The underdog Nanooks surprised UAA with a first-set win, but the 11th-ranked and undefeated Seawolves roared back to grab a 24-26, 25-11, 25-12, 25-15 win in the Great Northwest Athletic Conference match.
UAA posted a season-best attack percentage of .410 to move to 11-0, the best start in program history, surpassing the 10-0 mark registered by the 1988 team.
But even with the perfect record, the Seawolves won't feel invincible later this week when they play their first home match in nearly three weeks.
"After tonight's Game 1 loss, that keeps us from feeling that way," UAA coach Chris Green said after the match.
Morgan Hooe, Leah Swiss and Caitlin Hanson combined for 14 kills without an error and Julia Mackey shined in her final match in her hometown to help UAA hit above the .400 mark for the eighth time since 2000 and the second time this season.
Mackey, a senior from West Valley, amassed 13 kills on 23 attacks with two errors, ensuring that she and fellow senior Katelynn Zanders of Anchorage will complete their four-year careers at UAA without ever losing in Fairbanks.
Zanders was a workhorse. She was responsible for more than one-third of UAA's attacks – 33 – and turned 16 of them into kills while making errors on seven. She also served five of UAA's eight aces.
UAA (11-0 overall, 3-0 GNAC) led 22-17 in the first set before the Nanooks went on a 9-2 run to win it.
"They came out with a different offense than we were expecting and it kind of threw us," Green said. "But then we settled down and maybe served a little tougher. We did a really nice job with the serving game for the second straight match."
The Nanooks (0-11, 0-3) struggled at the service line, missing 14. The service errors helped UAA win the second set, Green said
"We got a lot of easy points in the second game," he said. "With our serving, they weren't able to pass very well, and they missed a ton of serves."
After that, UAA's offense caught fire. After hitting .231 in the first set and .353 in the second, UAA hit .500 in the third set and .611 in the fourth. The Seawolves committed just one hitting error in each of those sets.
UAA racked up nine blocks to UAF's one, with Hanson getting one solo block and five assists. Hooe and Erin Braun had a hand in three blocks apiece. Kyla Militante-Amper contributed a match-high 15 digs.
UAF hit .093 for the match after a first-set .250. Sam Harthun slammed 15 kills to vault into second place on the school's all-time kills list with 1,224. Tops on that list with 1,363 is Mallory Larranaga, a former UAF coach now at Lake Superior State.
It was the third straight road match for the Seawolves, who were playing their third match in six days and get no break in the immediate future. They play their fourth match in eight days on Thursday, when they host Montana State-Billings at 7 p.m. at the Alaska Airlines Center.