ELIZABETHTOWN, Pa.- After a strong start on Friday night at the Days Inn Invitational at Elizabethtown College, the Easten University volleyball team came back with two solid performances on day to to earn a second tournament title in the young season. Rikki Schlager earned Most Valuable Player honors and Stephanie Elechko joined her on the All-Tournament team.

The No. 15 Eagles (12-2) jumped out to a quick start against McDaniel (7-4), and never let the Green Terror have the opportunity to get an attack started. Coach Birtwistle felt that the first match on Saturday might have been the team's strongest offensive effort to date. The Eagles hit an eye-popping .438 with only four errors in the match. To put that in perspective, the Eagles had three blocks in the first set alone. The Eastern attack was incredibly balanced in the first set. Eastern had 19 kills from five players. Alicia Weigel and Elechko each had five kills. Kaitlyn Gochenauer had four, Morgan Shemonski had three and Michelle Paulsen had two.

Coach Mark Birtwistle described the event as a game where every time McDaniel tried to shut off one option, Schlager would go another way and it would connect. All of those options were made available, of course by good passing and solid defense. 

The Eagles scored more points on the block in the second set, and so the hitting numbers went down slightly. Paulsen had three blocks in the set. The Eagles closed out the match with a solid 25-22 third set.

The Eagles struggled out of the gate in a 25-15 first set loss to the host Blue Jays, but they found their answer at the outside hitter spots. The Blue Jays could not stop a pair of hot hands on the outside.

Both Elechko and Erin Hillman posted career best numbers in the four-set win. Elechko converted at an alarming .535 clip for 27 kills. Hillman was not far behind with 19 kills and a .455 percentage. With the two outsides hitting so well and Schlager running the offense, the Eagles bounced back to take the next three sets in fairly quick order. Birtwistle credited the defensive play of Rylie Haas, Miranda Kauffman, and Alexis Harbold with helping his team to find their rhythm after a rough start.

With her 30 digs in the two matches, Haas moved over 1500 career digs and into third pace on the Eastern career list. The junior libero is 24 digs behind Courtney Reinhold for the second spot.

Birtwistle noted that both Elizabethtown (10-4)  and McDaniel are teams that are making moves into the regional rankings and that today's wins could prove to be important ones for the Eagles. The Eagles are at King's on Tuesday and then will have a tremendous test on Friday night when No. 4 Juniata visits the Gymnasium for an important Regional battle.