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JACKSONVILLE, Ill. – The Illinois College women's volleyball team came out fired up in front of a loud student section, giving the Blue Crew plenty to cheer about as the night went along. The Lady Blues combined to hit .300 in the match as a team, while Rockford University had just one more kill than attack error on the night. Taken together, the result of those two stats was a fairly simple 3-0 win (25-14, 25-11, 25-16) for IC over the Regents to start off 2019 at 1-0.
Brenna Dameris started off a big night for her with a kill and that 1-0 lead eventually grew to 5-0 before Rockford would get on the board in the first set. From there, IC added another four straight points to take a commanding 9-1 lead in the set. The lead grew to double-digits by the middle portion of the set and the Lady Blues were never troubled, closing out the set when Nicole Eggers committed one of RU's 22 attack errors in the match.
The second set was fairly close much of the way until it took a hard turn in IC's favor. With the Lady Blues ahead 14-11, another Dameris kill put Illinois College ahead by four and gave the ball to Dameris to serve. Her first two serve attempts ended with IC keeping the ball in the air long enough for
Ali Pankey to slam down a pair of kills from
Elizabeth Ganley. After a Rockford timeout at 17-11, Dameris proceeded to serve out the set with five aces along the way.
The Regents scored the first two points of the third set, but Illinois College responded with seven unanswered. Dameris had two kills and a block assist in that stretch of action. The closest the Regents would get after that was three points at 8-5 and the final point of the night fittingly came from Dameris to close it out.
Pankey ended the night as the kills leader in the match with 16. Dameris had 10 and a match-high .450 hitting percentage. Ganley was a single dig shy of a double-double as she had nine to go along with 32 assists.
The Illinois College Invitational concludes on Saturday. IC first takes on Simpson College at 10 a.m. before finishing off with Anderson University at 2 p.m.
