The Dominican University women's volleyball team ran their current winning streak to six matches with an overpowering 3-1 (25-19, 25-17, 17-25, 25-11) win over the Concordia University Chicago Cougars to open Northern Athletics Collegiate Conference (NACC) play on Wednesday night. With the win the Stars improve to 9-2 on the year and have now won 13 straight contests over its River Forest counterpart.
"I'm excited to get our first conference win of the year," said
Cameron Andrew, the Stars' second-year head coach. "We had a little slip up in the third set, but regained our composure and ran away in the fourth."
"Our goal was to stay aggressive at the service line and we did a great job there.
Anastasia [Labadessa] had a great run to start the second set and then
Madeline [Morrow] had an awesome run to really put the match away in the fourth."
The Stars won the battle in nearly every statistical category including the serving line where Dominican picked up 16 aces to the Cougars nine. Labadessa finished the night four aces to go along with 20 assists and 12 digs while
Gillian Jones and
Emily Mahoney added three aces apiece.
Offensively, the Stars balanced attack saw
Keely McCallum and
Summer Smith pick up eight kills apiece while Jones and
Haley Notzen knocked down seven kills apiece. As a team, the Stars, behind Labadessa and
Natalie Jones (nine assists), hit .196 in the win with 42 kills to 21 errors on 107 total attacks.
Defensively, the Stars allowed just 29 kills for the Cougars, collecting 53 digs and adding eight blocks at the net. Sophomore libero
Sarah Lychock led the back row effort with a match-high 15 digs while
Gabija Sinickaite posted a team-high six block assists.
The Stars now head home for the first time in 2019, hosting the Monmouth College Fighting Scots for a 6:00 p.m. match on Saturday at the Igini Sports Forum—the nightcap to Dominican's Homecoming 2019 festivities.
"We are looking forward to getting home and getting to play in front of our own home fans for the first time this year," commented Andrew. "We have done a great job navigating through a difficult schedule on the road for the first three weeks of the season. Now we have to take care of business at the Igini Sports Forum on Saturday before heading back on the road for a couple of weeks."
