Volleyball drops two four-set matches on the road
Volleyball was unable to hold off rival Western Michigan Friday and Northern Illinois Saturday in a pair of 3-1 matches.
CMU split the first two sets with its rival, losing the first set, 25-21 and then winning the second set 25-20. They would go on to lose the next two sets by scores of 25-19 and 25-16.
Though the match ended up in a loss for the Chippewas, they were able to get at one set over the Broncos, showing the team is going in the right direction. Staying in games was something that head coach, Erik Olson mentioned he wanted his team to do during this week’s practices.
"We passed the ball well against them (WMU)," Olson said. "We really think that we were one degree away from beating Western and we played well against some of their best players."
Junior outside hitter, Kaitlyn McIntyre had 17 kills, to go along with 12 digs and senior libero Jenna Coates had 30 digs. Coates came into the weekend ranked 16th in the country with 5.29 digs per set. Junior Hallie Enderle compiled 13 digs in the team’s losing effort.
McIntyre recorded her 1,000th kill at WMU, becoming the 16th member of the 1,000-kill club and the seventh member since rally scoring began in 2000. There are nine members of the 1,000-kill club from the pre-rally scoring era.
McIntyre was even more dominant Saturday, with a season-high 26 kills in the loss (21-25, 25-22, 20-25, 30-32) to Northern Illinois.
Junior setter Danielle Thompson performed well in the absence of senior setter Kelly Maxwell, who entered the weekend No. 16 in the country with 11.5 assists per set. Thompson had 53 assists Friday and 39 Saturday.
CMU had more kills, assists and digs than the Huskies in the match, but they also had 18 more errors during the four sets.
The fourth set was tightly contested, with 12 tie scores and five lead changes. The Chippewas were up 30-29, one point away from beating NIU, but the Huskies stormed back with three straight points to win the set and take the match.
Coates was one dig shy Friday of breaking the four-set single match record of 31 set in 2005 by Ali McCrite. She broke the record the next night with 37 digs against the Huskies.
The Chippewas play at 7 p.m. Thursday at Eastern Michigan and come home to play Kent State at 7 p.m Saturday at McGuirk Arena.
