YORk, Pa.– Eastern University Women's Volleyball hit .316 as a team to earn a convincing three-set win over the host York College Spartans in the second MAC Commonwealth contest of the year for both squads.
Hannah Pringle finished with a match-best 11 kills as the Eagles earned their 25th consecutive win against MAC Commonwealth Competition.
The Eagles (10-5, 2-0 ) jumped to an 18-8 lead in the opening set and never trailed in a set the rest of the way. Eastern hit .294 in winning the opening set 25-19. The hosts committed to serving aggressively. While the Eagles picked up four points on service errors, the young York squad was able to get the Eagles out of system and scored some points in transition to keep within striking distance in the first set. Pringle and
Logan Martin each had four kills in the first.
"York played us well," Head Coach
Mark Birtwistle said after the match. " They have a young team and they worked hard. We tried some new things tonight that worked in some cases and not in others. Overall we had a good effort. We served well through the night."
While the Spartans (4-11,1-1) finished the match with four aces and eleven service errors, the Eagles had Seven aces and only five errors.
Grace Casagrande had four aces and
Bridgette Kelly had the other three.
The Spartans stayed within striking distance early in the second, but Casagrande started a run of five-straight Eastern servers to score on serve to close out the second set. Pringle had four kills on five swings in the set, but the Eagles had only nine kills in the set.
Eastern hit .455 in the third set to close out the match. Kelly had three kills and two blocks in the 25-11 win.
Jessie Schreiber delivered the final kill on her only attack of the night. The Eagles were successful on 11-of-12 sideout chances in the final set.
Grace Cooper finished with 12 digs.
Eastern beat York in the MAC Commonwealth semifinals last night. In the other rematch of a 2023 MAC Commonwealth Semifinal, Messiah University earned a 3-1 win at Stevenson as the Falcons snapped a 19-match losing streak in the series.
Eastern will host the Immaculata University Mighty Macs on Friday before hosting Stevenson next Wednesday. Eastern and Stevenson have played in each of the last three MAC Commonwealth Championship matches.
