Volleyball sweeps Youngstown State tournament over weekend
One week ago, the Central Michigan women’s volleyball team was reeling, having lost its first three games of the season.
But one good weekend changed all of that, as CMU won the Youngstown State Invitational with a pair of sweeps on Saturday in Youngstown, Ohio, evening its record to 3-3 on the season.
Head coach Erik Olson was very pleased with his team’s effort over the weekend and said it was vast improvement from their first tournament of the season.
“Everything we did was better and I think we learned an awful lot from the first weekend,” Olson said.
Opening the tournament against Niagara, the Chippewas got off to a fast start offensively behind the scoring of senior Lauren Krupsky. Krupsky, named tournament MVP, accounted for 18 kills in the first match and a total of 41 for the weekend.
CMU would claim the first match by a 3-1 margin, something Olson was excited to see play out following a tough opening weekend in which the Chippewas went winless at the Purdue Mortar Board Premiere tournament in West Lafayette, Ind.
“We earned every point of that match,” Olson said. “And we ended up putting up better defensive numbers than them so that was a great win for us.”
The second match of the weekend saw CMU again take a commanding lead early on their way to a 3-0 sweep of Howard.
Senior Lisa Johnson helped lead the offense to a 25-12, 25-7, 25-20 victory by contributing four of the team’s 14 aces.
Freshman Jenna Coates aided another strong defensive effort, getting seven digs in the match. Senior Lindsey Dulude added three solo blocks in the match, holding Howard to a -.145 hitting percentage.
Although not as daunting task as Niagara, Olson saw a major positive in how his team played throughout the second match and weekend overall.
“What I liked is how we beat them, we took it to them hard and that’s going to help us for this up coming weekend,” Olson said.
The final test of the weekend was against host Youngstown State.
The Chippewas swept their second consecutive match of the weekend, defeating the Penguins 25-13, 25-14 and 25-17. Krupsky finished the weekend with a strong 14-kill performance in the final match.
Sophomore Catherine Ludwig added 42 assists in the match and 113 on the weekend to be included on the all-tournament team.
Olson said on the other important aspect of the weekend was that his team was able to remain in good health. He expects a good week of practice before the Chippewas travel to Milwaukee, Wisc., on Friday to play Horizon League opponent Wisconsin-Milwaukee.
“So far, our health is OK coming out of the weekend,” Olson said. “But, were going to continue to work on our offense because we still need to do things more efficiently and get stops a little sooner.”
