PENSACOLA, Fla. – The University of West Florida volleyball team split two matches to open the regular season at the 2015 Hampton Inn-vitational on Friday. West Florida defeated Missouri-St. Louis 3-0 (25-14, 25-13, 25-22) in the team's first match of the tournament before falling to No. 3 Southwest Minnesota State 2-3 (25-19, 16-25, 25-22, 21-25, 10-15) in the nightcap.

"I think our team played well today, I can't ask for anymore effort from them," head coach Melissa Wolter said. "They fought hard. I was pleased with their performance statistically this afternoon. Tonight we knew we had a really good opponent to face, but in the grand scheme of things this is the second match of the year. To be able to push a team like that to five (sets), make no mistake we went in to tonight to win it, but I just think it's a great learning opportunity for our team. If we can put tonight in perspective, I think we're going to grow from this. I think this could be a real confidence builder for this team."

West Florida 3, Missouri-St. Louis 0
 
West Florida used an impressive .342 team attacking percentage in the win over UMSL to open the regular season. Three Argonauts tallied double-digit kills led by senior Autumn Duyn (Venice, Fla./Venice HS) who led the team with 12 kills. Junior Corisha Smith (Inwood, W.Va./Musselman HS) added 11 kills at a .391 clip while redshirt junior Kathryn Torre (Highland, Ill./State College of Florida) tallied 10 kills at a .471 clip and added a pair of blocks in her debut for the Argonauts.
 
Sophomore Rachel Neblett (Austin, Texas/Vista Ridge HS) had a solid outing as well tallying nine kills at a .533 clip with a pair of blocks.
 
Monique StCyr (Williamsburg, Va./Jamestown HS) has a stellar start to her sophomore campaign tallying 41 assists and a pair of service aces while junior libero Tori Martella (Jacksonville, Fla./Providence HS) had a team-high 16 digs in the win.
 
The Argonauts had a match high .415 team attacking percentage in the third set tallying 19 kills of 41 attacks with only two errors.
 
No. 3 Southwest Minnesota State 3, West Florida 2
 
UWF opened up the match with a 25-19 win in the first set behind an impressive .323 attacking percentage but would go on to drop the second set by a score of 16-25. The Argonauts responded winning the third set by a score of 25-22 but fell in the fourth set 21-25.
 
No. 3 SMSU would go on to take the fifth set by a score of 15-10.
 
Duyn and junior Cora Bidlack (Randolph, N.J./Randolph HS) led the Argonauts with 11 kills each while Smith added nine kills in the loss. StCyr led UWF with 38 assists while Martella had a team-high 18 digs.
 
West Florida will continue play at the 2015 Hampton Inn-vitational on Saturday, Sept. 5 with a match against Bridgeport at 11:30 a.m. before facing No. 21 Arkansas Ft. Smith at 7 p.m.
 
For information on all UWF athletics, visit www.GoArgos.com.