WALLA WALLA, Wash. – For the second night in a row Whitman College's volleyball team swept aside a Northwest Conference opponent by a 3-0 score at the Sherwood Athletics Center, downing George Fox University Saturday night after cruising to a win Friday by the same score over Lewis & Clark College. Megan Bafus and Shae Kanakaole led the Missionaries' attack against GFU, piling up a combined 21 of the team's 43 kills in the win over the visiting Bruins.

Whitman evens its league record at 4-4 while edging closer to the .500 mark overall at 8-9. George Fox slips to 1-7 in the league and 2-16 overall.

Saturday's final result seemed expected throughout the night, but it wasn't without a few challenging moments.

Whitman reeled off the first four points in Game 1, only to have Fox return the favor with a seven-point run to take the lead away. A 6-0 streak from the Missionaries righted the ship and they never trailed again, stretching the lead to its final 11 points in the 25-14 win.

Early action in Game 2 was back and forth. Whitman went up 6-5 on a Natalia Zea kill but the Bruins tied it on a kill from Delaney Cruz, the first of four consecutive points to move in front for the first time since early in the opener.

George Fox's lead grew to six at 16-10 but a Bafus kill set the course for a 15-4 rally that seemed unstoppable, despite a pair of timeouts called by the visitor's bench.

Game 3 was all Whitman…until the end.

The Missionaries pushed ahead on a Bafus kill to open the game and built an advantage that reached seven points three times on its way to a nine-point edge at 22-13. That was when the roof nearly caved in as the Bruins rallied with a 10-2 run to pull within a point at 24-23.

A Whitman timeout settled the troops and they finished off the 25-23 win on an attacking error on the George Fox side of the net.

Bafus' match-high 11-kill night night included three block assists, and Kanakaole added a pair of service aces and 11 digs to her 10-kill evening. Kaileah Akker and Zea added to the Missionaries' net play with a combined 11 kills and four blocks.

Becoming routine now, Anna Dawson registered a match-high in set assists with 31 but also came up with five digs to go along with three kills. Of the team's 10 service aces both Franny Gardner and Abby Seethoff claimed three each for Whitman.

Hannah Linsenmayer accumulated a match-best 18 digs, out doing George Fox's Brynelle Bremner who had 15.

Whitman gets the chance to repeat this weekend's performances in its next two outings as the University of Puget Sound visits Sherwood on Friday, Oct. 17 at 7 p.m. with Pacific Lutheran University following the next night at 5 p.m.