Olympic sport wrap up — A mixed bag

It was a... up and down week for the Iowa Olympic sports.

The Iowa volleyball team had the biggest game of the weekend, as they faced No. 22 Iowa State on Friday evening and lost in four sets, 3-1.

Iowa State took the first set 25-19, though Iowa responded in the second with a tight 25-23 win. The Cyclones took the final two 26-24 and 30-28. Oof, those are some close matches.

From Bond Shymansky, to HawkeyeSports:

"I like how our group rallied and battled. Credit Iowa State for sticking with it and battling on. Our young group just needs to learn. When we separated we just didn't keep it that way to keep the focus. That's on me as a coach. I have to work with our group and keep getting better at that. I love our team, love what we have going on. I think there is a lot of growth that's happening in there. I'm definitely disappointed. Our group is disappointed. We need to be hungry to work harder. We are going to be in a lot of tight moments like that all season along with other great teams. We just need to take advantage and learn how to finish in those moments."

Iowa did, however, find themselves with a great crowd for the Iowa-Iowa State game

Awesome. Iowa downed Northern Illinois twice over the weekend to go 2-1 over the last week and now sit at 8-2 overall. Not bad at all.

The Hawkeye volleyball team heads to Washington D.C. this week for three games in the American Volleyball Classic. They’ll face Howard, American, and Princeton.

Keep it rolling.

Soccer tops Grizz, falls to Loyola-Chicago

On senior night, the Hawkeye soccer team managed a narrow 1-0 victory over Montana on a Natalie Winters penalty kick in the 37th minute.

Iowa then turned around and dropped a game to Loyola-Chicago in which the Hawkeyes actually outshot the Ramblers, despite losing 3-0. Iowa heads into Big Ten play next, facing Nebraska on Friday, which was what head coach Dave DiIanni was focused on when he spoke after the Loyola match to HawkeyeSports.

"For us, it was an example of hopefully a good lesson. We just got outplayed and we were not prepared and our margin for error is just not good enough. It's too small to not be all in as a group and unfortunately, we haven't seen that performance at a practice. We've had a good nonconference schedule and it's unfortunate we ended it this way. We are going to have to find some lessons in it and be ready to go against Nebraska next Friday."

Iowa’s Big Ten opener against the Cornhuskers starts at 7 p.m. on Friday night and will be televised on the BTN. It will be worth watching. Iowa sits at 5-2 heading into conference play.

Field hockey splits against New Hampshire

After splitting a pair of games against New Hampshire, the Hawkeyes dropped to No. 19 and sit at 3-4 on the year.

Iowa fell to the Wildcats 3-2 on Friday before winning 7-1 on Sunday which moved them to 3-4 on the year.

Not completely ideal, but there was a big bright spot as freshman Maddy Murphy was named Big Ten Freshman of the week. She notched 133 minutes between the two games against New Hampshire and scored two goals. She also had two assists.

The Hawkeyes get their Big Ten season going this weekend, facing Penn State on Friday. They’ll then fit in a game against Penn on Sunday before heading back to Iowa City.