By: In only its second true road match this season, the Lady Blues came out firing and left with an easy 3-0 sweep of Blackburn College on Wednesday night.
Box Score
CARLINVILLE, Ill. – The Illinois College volleyball team snapped its four-match losing streak and made it back to .500 ahead of the team's home tournament this weekend with an emphatic 3-0 sweep of Blackburn College on Wednesday night. The Lady Blues were rarely challenged by the Beavers, taking comfortable leads early in each set in the 25-18, 25-11, 25-19 victory.
With Illinois College ahead, 13-7, in the first set, Blackburn used a timeout and promptly rallied to within two points. The Lady Blues fought through the comeback however, with two
Lisa Lowry kills and two
MacKenzie Heinz kills bookending a pair of Beaver attack errors to push the lead up to 19-11. The lead for IC wouldn't fall under five points the rest of the set and
Maddie Ramsey finished it off on an assist from
Elizabeth Ganley for the 1-0 IC lead.
In the second set, Blackburn won the first two points before a kill from Lowry earned a side-out for the Lady Blues. Checking into the match,
Cheyanne Jockisch took over serving duties with IC trailing, 2-1. By the time Blackburn finally won the ball back over to its side of the net, the Illinois College lead was up to 11-3. Heinz had three kills in the set and the Beavers had only six kills compared to 11 attack errors in the easy 25-11 win.
Illinois College never trailed in the third and final set, taking the lead for good on a
Rebecca Shields kill that made it 4-3. Shields and Ramsey combined for a block on the next point and the lead began to expand. The Lady Blues led by as many as seven points, going up 21-14 on an ace from
Kori Hayes, and the match ended with a service error from Blackburn.
Lowry led all players in the match with 14 kills.
Ali Pankey added eight, Ramsey had six and both Heinz and Shields had five. Ganley ended with 30 assists and 11 digs on the night.
Brenna Garland had a team-high 17 digs, while Jockisch added 12 along with three aces.
Illinois College (6-6) will now play host to six other schools this weekend at the second home tournament of 2016. The Lady Blues will match up with RMU-Springfield for the second time this season on Sept. 23 at 3:30 p.m. Later in the day, IC will face Principia College at 7:30 p.m. On Sept. 24, the Lady Blues will meet Anderson University at 10 a.m. and Earlham College at 2 p.m. Augustana College and Monmouth College will also participate in the tournament.
