BETHLEHEM, Pa. -- The Elizabethtown College women's volleyball team saw its 2018 season come to end with an up-and-down Saturday Landmark doubleheader at Moravian. Multiple Blue Jays set match, season and career-highs in a 3-1 victory over the host Greyhounds, before suffering a 3-0 defeat to Susquehanna in the finale.
ELIZABETHTOWN 3, MORAVIAN 1
23-25, 25-23, 25-20, 25-21
Elizabethtown stuffed the stat sheet with season-highs of 61 kills and 60 assists to hold off a hungry Moravian squad playing its last home matches of the season.
Mackenzie Garner, embarking on the final day of her stellar career, tied a career-high with 23 kills and chipped in four blocks. Fellow senior
Sarah Schneider produced a career-high 27 digs and freshman setter
Rileigh Hudock had career-highs of 58 assists and 19 digs to surpass the 1,000-assist mark this season.
Hudock's 58 assists are tied for the third most in a match in program history and mark the highest total by a Blue Jay since 2006, when Stacey Wasserman had 58 in a match against Messiah. The Wilmington, Delaware native is also the first Blue Jay to record 1,000 assists in a season since Crystal Agnew finished with 1,101 in 2010.
The Blue Jays (19-15, 2-3 Landmark) got their offense going in the second set, rattling off 15 kills against three errors for a .255 hitting percentage. That number increased to .342 in the third and leveled out at .341 in the fourth, allowing Elizabethtown to snap a four-match losing streak against the Greyhounds (14-17, 0-5) going back to 2014.
Sophomore middle hitter
Marisa Krinock had 12 kills and Schneider 10 for her eighth kill-dig double-double of the season. E-town's 61 kills came from just five different players, as
Kelli Garriott and
Elle Shatto each totaled eight.
Elizabethtown's 84 digs were two off its season-high, set against McDaniel on Oct. 13. Following Schneider and Hudock in double figures were Shatto (15) and
Aiyana Tietze-Di Toro (10).
Garner was the lone Blue Jay with a solo block, but the team combined for 14 block assists, led by four from Krinock. Garner and Garriott each had three.
Moravian got 18 kills from Erin Tiger and a 12-kill, 14-dig double-double from Brooke Kusmider in defeat. Victoria Kauffman had 49 assists and 11 digs for the Hounds, while Kirah Dreisbach led the hosts with 19 digs.
SUSQUEHANNA 3, ELIZABETHTOWN 0
19-25, 21-25, 19-25
The Blue Jays raced out to leads midway through the first and second sets against Susquehanna, but could not overcome hitting under .100 for the match in a 3-0 defeat to end the season.
Having already been eliminated from postseason contention by virtue of Susquehanna's 3-0 win over Goucher earlier in the day, Elizabethtown's immediate focus was on trying to get its 20th win of the season.
Seven kills from the Blue Jays, including two apiece from
Mackenzie Garner and
Marisa Krinock, coupled with six River Hawks (23-12, 5-1 Landmark) attacking errors had Elizabethtown in front 15-12 in the opening set.
Unfortunately for the Jays, a few errors of their own accelerated an 8-1 run for Susquehanna, putting the River Hawks in control, 23-17.
The second set featured four lead changes in the early going. E-town broke a 13-all tie on a
Rileigh Hudock kill and went up by three following an ace from
Elle Shatto. SU would come back with five straight points, but a Krinock kill late in the set gave the Jays (19-16, 2-4) the lead once again, 20-19. Two Kody Dillon kills and a block from Veronica Kirchner and Sydney Portale helped the River Hawks prevail with four straight points to end the set.
Garner recorded a team-high nine kills,
Sarah Schneider had six and Shatto five. Hudock posted her 16th assist-dig double-double of the year with 27 and 11.
Aiyana Tietze-Di Toro had 11 digs and Schneider 10.
Susquehanna received 12 kills from Dillon and nine more from Riley O'Dowd. Lindsey Pugh led all players with 35 assists. The River Hawks attacked at a .256 clip (46 kills-14 errors-125 attempts) to the Jays' .071 (31-22-127).
Saturday's finale brought the careers of three Blue Jays to a close: Garner, Schneider and
Katie Kennedy.
Garner, a likely All-Landmark selection for the fourth time when teams are announced next week, ranks fifth in program history with 1,236 kills over 111 matches. The middle hitter from Huntingdon, Pennsylvania hit .327 for her career while averaging 3.24 kills per set. She also collected 302 blocks.
Schneider, an outside hitter from Downingtown, Pennsylvania, eclipsed 800 kills (866) and 800 digs (821) during her four-year career, which also spanned 111 matches. Schneider set new career-highs in both categories this season, finishing with 289 kills and 366 digs. She also had a career-high 39 blocks in 2018.
Kennedy, of Lafayette Hill, Pennsylvania, totaled 91 aces and 145 digs in three seasons. She finished with four aces against the River Hawks on Saturday, the sixth time this season she'd had four or more aces in a match.