BELOIT, Wis. – The Illinois College volleyball team had to rally in the third set but otherwise handled its business on Friday night with a 3-0 sweep (25-19, 25-10, 25-17) of Beloit College. The win lifts the Lady Blues to 15-6 (5-1 Midwest Conference) on the season.
Both teams came out swinging in the first set but it was Illinois College who grabbed a comfortable lead early on and maintained it throughout the set. IC had 18 kills against just two attack errors in the set and took the lead for good off of three straight kills from
Ali Pankey,
Brenna Dameris and
Elizabeth Ganley to take a 4-2 lead in the set. With the score 6-5 in favor of the Lady Blues, IC scored seven of the next eight points to go up, 13-6. The closest the Buccaneers could get after that was three and IC closed out the set with a solo block from
Abbie Horstmann.
A combination of a match-high .367 hitting percentage from the Lady Blues along with eight attack errors from the Bucs spelled big trouble for the home side in the second set.
Maddie Ramsey staked IC to a 2-0 lead and back-to-back attack errors from Molly Muller made it 4-0 before a
Madison Klanke kill for a 5-0 edge early on. With the score 7-2, the Lady Blues reeled off nine straight points to take a commanding 16-2 advantage. The teams more or less traded points from there until the score sat at 22-10 in favor of IC. A
Faith Stallard kill, block from
Sam Sabo and
Kennedy Carnes and then a kill from Carnes closed out the set at 25-10.
Beloit jumped on top of Illinois College early in the third set, taking a 7-2 lead. Pankey kept IC in it with three straight kills and the team finally came to life with five straight points, erasing a 10-7 deficit and taking a 12-10 lead. The final tie of the match came at 13-13 but the Lady Blues would record eight of the next nine points to take a 21-14 edge. Pankey had three kills and both
Madie Budd and Dameris had aces over that stretch. Horstmann had the final two kills of the match for IC to close it out.
Pankey had match-highs of 16 kills and 21 digs on the night. Dameris added in nine kills. Ganley dished out 39 assists and had 13 digs. Budd also had 13 digs and led IC with three of the team's eight aces in the match.
Illinois College closes out the weekend with a 1 p.m. match in Appleton, Wis. tomorrow against Lawrence University.
