Staff photo by Steve Muscatello New Ulm Cathedral’s Becca Schwarz (9) spikes the ball as Cassie Heinrichs tries to block attempts to block it Thursday at CHS. For more photos of this event go to cu.nujournal.com

NEW ULM — Sleepy Eye St. Mary’s volleyball continued its red-hot play at the expense of equally impressive New Ulm Cathedral on Thursday, picking up a 3-1 Tomahawk Conference victory.

The Knights won 25-22, 25-21, 22-25, 25-17.

The Knights move to 10-2 overall on the year and 2-0 in the conference, while the Greyhounds drop to 9-2 overall and 1-1 in the conference.

“When we prepared for them the last couple practices, we thought we’d be really evenly matched,” Knights coach Jen Walter said. “We talked about — they’re scrappy, we’re scrappy. They’ve got this hitter, we’ve got this hitter. I think — especially in game four — we just turned it on. We were determined to win.

“We’ve got to work on coming out stronger, so I say that’s something we’ve got to work on, but we knew it was going to be an evenly-matched game and I really think it was.”

Cathedral opened up the first set with an 8-5 lead after a kill by Rose Hazuka, who had 12 kills and 18 digs on the night. St. Mary’s tied it up at 8-8 after benefiting on back-to-back Cathedral hitting errors.

After Cathedral led 11-10, St. Mary’s took 5 straight points to lead 15-11 and force a Cathedral timeout. Back-to-back kills by Kristina Long gave Cathedral an 18-17 lead, which then forced a St. Mary’s timeout.

Long had 14 kills on the night for the Greyhounds.

After another pair of kills in a row by Long, the Greyhounds led 21-19. The Knights went on a 6-1 run, though, to close out Set 1 with a win.

Set 2 saw Cathedral take a 6-0 lead to start things out, before back-to-back kills by Ali Beltz put the Knights on the board. Beltz had 11 kills on the night for the Knights.

Cathedral then took a 10-7 lead after an ace block by Becca Schwarz. The Knights went on a 14-2 run after Schwarz’s ace block, though, to lead 21-12.

Cathedral stopped the Knights’ run with a brief 3-0 run, finished with a kill by Hazuka to trail 21-15. Cathedral continued to fight, but ultimately dropped the second set.

Cathedral started out hot in Set 3, leading 6-1. A 3-0 run by St. Mary’s capped off with a hitting error by Cathedral had the Knights down 6-4.

The Greyhounds extended their lead to 16-7, before the Knights went on a 5-0 run to force a Greyhounds timeout. After an ace by Jenna Helget, the Greyhounds took a 21-14 lead.

Helget had 33 set assists and 29 digs for Cathedral.

Trailing 24-18, the Knights needed 5 points in a row to stay alive and despite getting hot near the end with a 4-0 run, they dropped the third set.

Set 4 was a back-and-forth contest throughout the first half of the set, with eight total ties before St. Mary’s was able to get a little breathing room with a 14-12 lead. A kill by Mallory Helget gave the Knights a 23-15 lead and a kill by Alexis Anderson ended the set and game.

Mallory Helget had nine kills for the Knights, while Dani Weiss had 36 digs. Jody Hansen had 30 set assists for the Knights.

Kirsten Spaude had 24 digs for the Greyhounds, while Sarah Mohr had 12 kills, 19 digs and 4 1/2 block kills.

“The biggest thing is controlling the ball,” Greyhounds coach Becky Wilfahrt said. “We had the lead in both games one and two and so much of it was on us tonight. We had 33 hitting errors and that really was the difference in the game.”

The Knights play at Springfield at 7 p.m. on Tuesday, while the Greyhounds travel to Minnesota Valley Lutheran for a conference matchup at 7 p.m. Thursday.