The Dominican University women’s volleyball team punched its ticket to the Northern Athletics Conference (NAC) Volleyball Tournament Championship on Thursday night, edging the Edgewood College Eagles in three sets (25-21, 26-24, 25-23). The win gives the Stars the right to host the NAC Championship for the second straight year. This time Dominican will host the Benedictine University Eagles on Saturday night for a 7:00 p.m. match in the Igini Sports Forum.
In the first set, Dominican raced out to 9-4 lead before the Eagles stormed back to pull within 11-10 on a kill by Jessica Martin. After a sideout for the Stars and a kill by senior
Jessica Gallagher (Bourbonnais, Ill.) put Dominican back in control at 13-10, the Eagles went on a 9-1 run behind a number of Dominican errors to take a 19-14 lead to force head coach Christine Paciero to call a timeout to settle down her Stars.
After a dump-kill by sophomore setter
Jessica Guerrieri (Plainfield, Ill.), the Stars scored the next four points to knot the score at 19-all. After an Eagle sideout, senior
Darcy Kammeier (Kirkwood, Mo.) pounded home one of her three kills in the first set to jump start a 3-0 run for the Stars. Dominican then closed out the first set with a pair of service aces for senior
Kasey Kiepura (Vernon Hills, Ill.).
In a tight second set, the sides exchanged blows all the way to 24-24 until an Eagle hitting error gave the Stars a 25-24 advantage. Freshman
Claire Dezelski (Northville, Mich.) then capped the set with a thunderous kill to put the Stars ahead 2-0.
The trend continued in the third set as the NAC Tournament’s numbers two and three seeds went kill-for-kill all the way up to 19-19 when Dominican finally created some space with a 3-0 run featuring another Kiepura service ace and capped by Dezelski’s 12th kill of the night. Dezelski then sealed the victory with Dominican’s tenth service ace of the match.
Kammeier paced the Stars with 15 kills, posting a .279 hitting percentage with just three errors on 43 attack attempts.
Dezelski and Guerrieri each tallied a double-double in the winning effort for Dominican. Dezelski posted 13 kills and a team-high 18 digs while Guerrieri logged 31 assists and 11 digs to go along with five kills. Freshman
Mary Pollard (Naperville, Ill.) and sophomore
Liz Yakey (Sun Prairie, Wis.) had 14 and 13 digs respectively.
The win puts the Stars in the NAC Championship for the second consecutive year, with the NAC’s automatic bid to the NCAA Division III Women’s Volleyball Championship on the line.
The Stars are now 25-9 on the season while the Eagles close the 2010 campaign with a 19-14 overall record.
