GREELEY, Colo. -- Northern Colorado's 2009 volleyball team stormed out the gates Saturday night with a 25-9 first-set victory in its annual Alumni Match and looked for all the world like the team head coach Lyndsey Benson has been so excited to unveil to supporters of her program.

The Bears cooled off from there but still cruised to a 3-1 (25-9, 23-25, 25-22, 25-21) victory in the type of match Benson was probably hoping for all along. She's glad her team was able to start the season off with a win, and she's probably also glad her team had to fight a little, too, after having its way early against the former Blue and Gold greats.

Northern Colorado's 2009 regular-season opener comes Friday, Aug. 28, at the North Texas Mean Green Volleyball Classic in Denton, Texas, and the Bears first home match will come the following week, when the Big 12's Colorado Buffaloes come to Greeley on Tuesday, Sept. 1.

Those are two pretty big tests to start the season, and Benson said she thought her team learned some lessons Saturday night as they enter their final week of preseason practices.

"We're not ready yet, and that showed at times tonight," said Benson, who's entering her fifth year at the helm of the Northern Colorado program. "We'll be ready by Friday, though. We've got another week of practice ahead of us, and there are definitely some things we can work on that we saw out there tonight. I expect great things out of these girls this season, and it was good to finally get going. We'll definitely need to play better once our season starts, though."

The Bears completely had their way in the early going Saturday night, hitting at a scorching .783 clip as a team in cruising to the set-one win.

The experienced Alumnae crew, though, featuring Joyce Jordahl-Bagley (1996-99), a 1999 DII All-American; Stormie Wells (1992-95), a Northern Colorado Hall of Famer; and more recent graduates, like Lauren Carter (2005-08), Abby Mayne (2004-07), answered right back with a victory in set two and then played the Bears close the rest of the way.

"It's a little bittersweet to play matches like this," Benson said. "On one hand, some of those players on the other team (like Carter and Mayne) are girls you've really put a lot of work and support into, and it's great to see them having success with a good play here and there. On the other hand, though, they are the opponent in this match."

Four Northern Colorado players began the season with double-digit kill efforts Saturday night, as seniors Allison Raguse (17 kills) and Kenzie Shreeve (16), and sophomore Breanna Williams (14) and junior Ashley Lichtenberg (12) all had great nights above the net.

Setting them up throughout was true-freshman Marissa Hughes, who started her Bears career with 47 assists, four digs and two kills.

Breanna VanDerMost led the Bears' defensive charge with 17 digs, but every Northern Colorado player in uniform but two had at least one dig in the match.

So, all in all, it was a well-rounded effort for Benson's program and Northern Colorado volleyball, in general. Benson's program left with a victory and the former players proved a solid early-season foe. It just didn't look like it was going to play out like that 15 minutes in Saturday night.

"We definitely didn't play great that first set," said Wells, who was playing in her third Alumni match since graduating from Northern Colorado in 1996. "But Coach Benson's got a great program going on over there, and I think we all saw a glimpse of that in that first one. We played better from there on out, but Benson was nice to us, too, and made some roster changes. A whole night of 25-9s was probably not what everyone wanted to see, and that's probably not what she wanted either. It ended up being a lot of fun."