All things must come to end.

The Eastern volleyball team had its 13-match winning streak in the Ohio Valley Conference snapped after a four-game loss at Eastern Kentucky on Saturday.

The Panthers’ .124 hitting percentage in the match is the lowest offensive output by Eastern (22-5, 13-1 OVC) all season.

In the loss, senior outside hitter Erica Gerth broke Vanessa Wells’ career record for digs at Eastern. Including the weekend, Gerth, who already owns Eastern’s all-time kills record, has recorded 1,609 digs in her collegiate career.

After winning game one against Eastern Kentucky 30-28, the Panthers’ offense sputtered and the team lost the next three games, 18-30, 23-30 and 21-30.

“Our biggest weapon is our offense,” Panther coach Brenda Winkeler said. “And when we’re not passing well, we can’t stay in system, which makes our offense a lot less effective.”

And the Panthers’ offensive deficiencies helped the Eastern Kentucky offense get started.

Eastern Kentucky junior middle blocker Liz Guard led all players with 19 kills and a .679 hitting percentage. The Colonels (23-4, 13-1) also had three players with 20 or more digs.

Junior middle blocker Megan Kennedy led Eastern with 14 kills and Gerth and senior middle blocker Shanna Ruxer both added 13 kills.

Before losing to the Colonels, Eastern won its 13th consecutive OVC contest, giving the team the best start in the OVC in Panther history.

The Panthers began the weekend by sweeping Morehead State 30-24, 30-22 and 30-23 on Friday. The win gave Eastern its 22nd victory of the season, the most in Winkeler’s five-year tenure.

Gerth led the way for Eastern with a match-high 21 kills and 18 digs.

Winkeler said she enjoyed watching Gerth re-write the Eastern record books.

“Erica’s a player who deserves it,” Winkeler said. “She’s very blessed physically, but what she does nutritionally and how she works to stay in shape sets her apart.”

Gerth said the digs record shows how much her coaches have helped her develop as a defensive player.

“When I came in as a freshman, I didn’t know how to play defense because I never really spent much time on it during high school,” she said. “The coaches here helped me improve a lot.”

With the Panthers’ first OVC loss, the team no longer controls its postseason destiny. If both Eastern and Eastern Kentucky win their final two OVC matches, the Colonels would be the regular-season champions because of the head-to-head tiebreaker.

The OVC regular season champ will host the conference’s postseason tournament. Regardless of next weekend’s results, the Panthers can finish no worse than second in the conference.

Winkeler said she expects her team to use the loss as motivation going into the final weekend of conference play.

“The way this team has responded to losses this season has been to play even better,” Winkeler said. “So, that’s encouraging.”

And Gerth echoed Winkeler’s sentiment and said losing to Eastern Kentucky has made her team hungrier for a potential meeting with the Colonels in the postseason.

“We didn’t play our best against them, and if we play our ‘A’ game next time, I think it will be a different match,” she said. “We need a second chance against them.

“People may have thought that it was the biggest match of the season, but we haven’t gotten there yet.”